May 13

Hilary Duff and ‘Lizzie McGuire’ cast reunite for a virtual table read

Posted in: Animation

The 90s kids who grew up watching some amazing shows on Disney Channel may very well remember Lizzie McGuire and the episode titled Between a Rock and a Bra Place, which just so happens to have aired on 11 May 2001! In a 44 minute Instagram video, Hilary Duff and the original cast of Lizzie McGuire reunited for a virtual table read of the episode.

The reunion featured Duff, Jake Thomas (Matt McGuire), Hallie Todd (Jo McGuire), Robert Carradine (Sam McGuire), Adam Lamberg (Gordo), Lalaine (Miranda), Davida Williams (Claire), Ashlie Brillault (Kate), Kyle Downs (who played Larry Tudgeman, but was reading David Carradine’s lines), writers Nina and Jeremy Bargiel, and former writer and father of Jake Thomas, Bob Thomas, who narrated during the table read. Duff also had a small animated Lizzie by her side.

The reunion comes after a Disney Plus reboot of the show was put on hold earlier this year after its original creator stepped down. Duff has since asked Disney to move the reboot to Hulu so the show could depict “the realities of a 30-year-old’s journey” without being restricted by a PG rating.

The post Hilary Duff and ‘Lizzie McGuire’ cast reunite for a virtual table read appeared first on AnimationXpress.

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May 13

Iron Man VR gets another release date

Posted in: Animation
Iron Man VR has been deferred once again. Since it was scheduled for a February release, the PSVR title release was pushed until May. However, Iron Man VR was delayed alongside The Last of Us Part 2 due to the logistical issues caused by the global COVID-19 outbreak.

When Tony Stark, an industrialist, is captured, he constructs a high-tech armoured suit to escape. Once he manages to escape, he decides to use his suit to fight against evil forces to save the world. In Iron Man VR, Tony Stark has been attacked by the mysterious Ghost. Ghost is a hacker and an anti-corporate activist, who repurposes old Stark Industries weapons to take over Tony Stark’s empire. Stark has to stop her and confront Ghost in an epic final battle. 

Sony has announced that Iron Man VR will be releasing on 3 July 2020 Along with Iron Man VR, Sony has updated the release schedules of two of its AAA exclusives. The Last of Us Part 2 is launching on June 19 and Ghost of Tsushima is releasing on July 17.

In Iron Man VR, Tony Stark has been attacked by the mysterious Ghost. Ghost is a hacker and an anti-corporate activist, who repurposes old Stark Industries weapons to take over Tony Stark’s empire. Stark has to stop her and confront Ghost in an epic final battle.

The post Iron Man VR gets another release date appeared first on AnimationXpress.

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May 13

Sony YAY! launches ‘Summer Camps with YAY!’ to keep kids entertained and engaged

Posted in: Animation

With the summer holidays coming sooner than expected, kids are looking to make the best of the time they have in this lockdown. As outdoor fun and games are a luxury now, kids are now spending more time indoors and this has been considered the right opportunity by Sony YAY! To make kids learn some new skills. 

The kids broadcaster has taken up the mantle of mixing fun and learning by presenting ‘Summer Camps with YAY!’ campaign that will see numerous workshops for kids which will keep them engaged and entertained throughout. Here is the list of activities from the campaign:

1. DIY fun with Lalon

The YAY! Summer Camp brings ‘the art genius’ Lalon for some DIY fun. He brings together a delightful experience for kids, as he teaches them to create a lot of fun DIYs with the simple material available at home. Kids can tune into Sony YAY!’s YouTube handle and get artistic with Lalon while they learn 10 unique art and craft pieces like reusable masks, photo frames and much more. The show will create a unique art every week.

2. Zumba Time for Kids with Sucheta Pal!

They say that ‘Dancing is like dreaming with your feet’. And what better way to dance the quarantine away with your little ones? Sony YAY! brings India’s first Zumba education specialist Sucheta Pal for conducting an exciting Zumba session that will entail lots of fun dance and moves. While it adds a lot of crazy fun and laughter, the exercise will also help increase kids’ physical strength effortlessly. Kids can put on their dancing shoes and groove with Sucheta Pal on the beat of Kicko Song, Honey Bunny ka Jholmaal song and other peppy tracks.

3. Magical story time with Devaki

Summer vacations are incomplete without storytelling, as it gives wings to imaginations. With Devaki from Little Readers Nook, Sony YAY! has carefully curated stories to take the kids on a magical journey. In this segment, Devaki will bring to life a variety of characters in her video series in the YAY! Summer camp.

4. Garden away & get It Growing: From seed to plant with Smitha

Getting close to nature has many benefits and what better time for kids to become plant parents and learn to grow greens of their own. Kids will sure want to get their hands dirty with the gardening master Smitha and experience the magical art of gardening by using simple things and tools that are available at home. This summer, they can learn the importance of vine and grass at the summer camp.

5. Yoga workshop with Sakshi Kharbanda

With all the fun and excitement, it’s also important for the kids to take the time out to relax and refresh, so that they become well-rounded happy individuals and yoga is key to unlock it. What better way to teach them to achieve the perfect balance between mind and body than practicing Yoga? Kids can roll their yoga mats in this relaxation time with the Yoga guru.

Joining the holiday bandwagon, actress Sameera Reddy who’s also a doting mom, has recently shared a cute video asking the adorable duo of Honey-Bunny to join her for some summer fun and giving fans a sneak peak on Sony YAY!’s Summer Camps that’s keeping her kids busy! 

These summer camp videos will be hosted across the Sony YAY! social media handles on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

The post Sony YAY! launches ‘Summer Camps with YAY!’ to keep kids entertained and engaged appeared first on AnimationXpress.

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May 13

#WhenAtHome: Five audio destinations to make kids’ quarantine productive and fun 

Posted in: Animation

While India battles COVID-19 and moves towards lockdown 4.0, people are balancing their personal and professional work staying indoors. Kids are scurrying around to make the best of the time of their lengthy summer vacation, but they soon get bored with one thing for a long time. Hence, it’s no easy task to manage them after tirelessly working all day. 

To make things a little easier for parents, here we list five audio destinations which act as a saving grace and keep children occupied, by reading your child’s favorite books to them, helping in their cognitive development.

1. Voot Kids

Voot Kids, from the house of Viacom18 digital ventures, Voot Kids has a range of popular audiobooks from Karadi Tales, Jataka Tales and Sony Music where Bollywood celebrities and cricketers like Soha Ali Khan, Vidya Balan, Ravid Dravid and so on, have read out stories that are loved by children. 

The audio section of the app is also loaded with audio originals from popular characters like Motu Patlu, Rudra, Shiva and to keep a child hooked.

Revealed Voot Kids business head Saugato Bhowmik to AnimationXpress, “Voot Kids aims to be in a unique position to make kids experience not just fun but meaningful. We’ve tried to create a unique differentiated space for kids where fun and learning meets. We’ve created a safe, secure, parentally controlled kid friendly environment where they can read, watch, listen and play, and in this process, take up multiple emotional, imaginative developments.”

Voot Kids is the first and only app fully accredited by the Early Childhood association, apex body who determines early childhood school curriculums. 

2. Audible 

Audible brings a series of classic children’s stories along with fairy tales to help kids improve their thought process and take them to fantasy land. Popular tales like The Three Bears, The Frog Prince, On the Road with Peppa Pig, The Elves and the Shoe-Maker, The Fairies, Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf and the Fox and more will trigger your child’s imagination. It also has a series of educational programmes for kids to access.

3. Amazon Kindle 

While Amazon Kindle has been a go-to app for easy reading, they also have  a Kindle Kids edition with a wide range of audiobooks for kids. Kids can easily read and listen to their favourite stories all at one place. 

They can also access a range of moral stories, mythological stories, fiction stories, spooky stories all while they are prepared to sleep and visit their dreamland. Amazon Kindle Kids houses over 1,000 audible books in the kid-friendly library.

Amazon Kindle Kids edition

4. Spotify Kids

Known for being a popular music app, Spotify recently launched Spotify Kids, which has a range of audiobooks for kids. The section includes more than 8,000 kid-appropriate songs, stories, audiobooks and sounds that are curated into 125+ playlists.

The app also comes with a range of jokes, riddles, silly songs to keep your kids giggling while they are brushing their teeth. It also reads good habits that children should practice. Kids can learn good habits and listen to their favorite stories all in one app.

It also has capabilities of parental controls, aimed at children ages three and above and up on a parent’s Spotify Premium Family plan, now included in the PIN-protected “Grown Ups” section, previously called the “Parental Settings.” In fact very lately, it has rolled out blocking, listening history features for parents.

5. Google Play Books

Google play books not only keep a child engaged but also help them in studying. Parents can access all kinds of story books for their child’s cognitive development and can access audio textbooks for their education. Your child can listen to stories and learn anytime anywhere. 

There’s some high prices on popular series like Harry Potter, The Dresden Files as well as a bunch of free audio books including Aesop Fables, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Cinderella, Princess and the pea, Golden Goose, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and more.

While parents are juggling between housework and office work, it’s difficult to make out time for reading to their kids, thus these audio apps will save your day.

The post #WhenAtHome: Five audio destinations to make kids’ quarantine productive and fun  appeared first on AnimationXpress.

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May 13

Rooter aims to become India’s Twitch

Posted in: Animation

Good and engaging content has always been the king! Sports technology platform Rooter, which who has engaged and retained audience through various sports content from quizes, debates, discussion, and so on , is now aiming to expand its platform for gaming and esports content.

Rooter founder and CEO Piyush Agarwal

In conversation with AnimationXpress Rooter founder and CEO Piyush Agarwal shared, “We always wanted to get into the gaming and esports that was in our plan and also to create content around gaming and esports. In fact, we are going to launch something officially on that really soon and which will help rooter to become a platform where there is sports content as well as gaming content, esport content”

Currently Rooter is a platform for sports and fantasy sports content where they focus on voice, video, and vernacular. A lot of users, influencers, celebrities are utilising the platform to create content in the form of quizzes, games, live streams, discussion, debates, and more on sports and fantasy sports.  Agarwal highlighted that even though on-ground matches have been cancelled, the platform has not been hugely affected like other platforms because first, it is a content platform for sports and fantasy sports and second even after on-ground matches are halted, there are lot of other sports content sports fans are consuming because of their enthusiasm for the sports in India. However, he also added “when there will be no live sports there is no fantasy. There is no fantasy content in our products, there are no fantasy games in any product right now. So none of the fantasy platforms are doing any games and we are also not putting any kind of content. But sports is again starting this weekend with Bundesliga, which is with football this weekend then there is Premier League which will be back early June. So as sports keep coming back fantasy sports content will also come back on our app.”

Giving the picture of the business during the COVID-19 lockdown period, he says, “revenues are lower than what it was before the lockdown I will not disagree that it’s not as bad as other platforms, we are doing reasonably good. Retention has gone up, about four to five per cent, users are picking more and they are finding the product relevant. Secondly, the time spent on the app has increased by almost three minutes, on an average, it is more than 20 minutes per user per day, that’s good and the number of session has also increased.”

Gaming

Recently the company partnered with Paytm First games and Paytm has invested in their company and in return rooter will be integrated in Paytm app as well as Paytm First Games apps to provide content to their audience on the platforms.

About the partnership, Paytm First Games COO Sudhanshu Gupta said, “We continue to grow our content offerings through gaming and the addition of Rooter’s communities and user-generated content will further enhance the use cases available on our platform. In the coming months, we will add more interactive content around Fantasy sports, Esports, and games while bringing benefits of the Paytm ecosystem to Rooter.”

On asking whether the platform which they are expanding for gaming and esports will be similar to Twitch he replied “yeah exactly, it will be something like twitch but much more customised for the audience. There will not be any games on our platform, but games what users will play on their phone say for example Ludo or if they will go to Paytm first games and play games like Real Cricket, Stick Cricket, FIFA, PUBG, anything they play on mobile they will be able to share the content of these games on rooter via Livestream or game streaming videos.”

They believe that audience for sports and gaming are very similar, “it’s a chain of 16 to 30 years old audience from tier one and tier two cities who are watching sports and also playing a lot of games on the mobile right now. So we identified this opportunity that if there are sports fans on our products then there are gaming fans too so we are aiming to offer them gaming tools which will help the users to do streaming and create content on the platform. This way they will also be able to join gaming communities which will be a great product for them because it is not just giving one value but it is giving them two values under the same vertical of content. Basically, we are coming up with the features which will allow users to create and consume content in gaming and esports under one umbrella,” he explained.

Although Rooter did not disclose much about their upcoming product he has shared that “after lockdown ends sports will resume again and following which Rooter will not only offer content for sports but also gaming and esports. Actually, after lockdown, we will have 3x better products for users where they will get content for sports, esports, and gaming altogether. We can’t just wait for the lockdown to end because the product and value that we have created for our user will be tremendous.”

The post Rooter aims to become India’s Twitch appeared first on AnimationXpress.

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May 13

Celebrating the beauty and purpose behind this piece by Giant Ant. 2017 Winner – The Motion Awards

Posted in: Animation

Don’t hold back, submit your best to the 2020 Motion Awards!

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May 13

Leave it to Buck to illustrate a story of togetherness. The Motion Awards: 2017 winner.

Posted in: Animation

These singles connected. Connect with our judges and submit!

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May 13

Nothing odd about it. Oddfellows does it again. Awarded Motion Award gold.

Posted in: Animation

Join the party and see how we play! Submit to The 2020 Motion Awards today!

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May 13

Roboarcaid

Posted in: Animation
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May 13

30% Off Everything at Greyscalegorilla – Stay At Home Sale

Posted in: Animation

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