Animation Festival Selects Ziggy’s Gift as Feature Film

Everett, WA – Ziggy’s Gift, the animated holiday special recently released on DVD, has been chosen by The Animaticus Foundation as a focus feature film for its Annual Animation Festival to be held at the Historic Everett Theater in Everett, Washington, November 17-19.

The festival, open to the general public, has been titled “2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival” to honor the history of animation and offer a unique and rarely-seen program of exciting and innovative work in the field. With special guest presentations, rarely-seen theater showings, conference lectures on everything about animation, and a comprehensive, multi-genre animation competition, the festival is an open invitation to anyone interested in the art and history of animation. Ziggy’s Gift was chosen as an example of a current animated special that utilizes classic hand-drawn animation rather than computer graphics.

Tom Wilson, artist for Ziggy, will join keynote speaker, Roy E. Disney, and Tony White, author of the new book, Animation from Pencils to Pixels and founder of The Animaticus Foundation, to discuss animation techniques past, present, and future.

For his keynote speech, Disney will present a retrospective of ground-breaking Disney short films, from “Steamboat Willie” through to “Lorenzo.” Wilson will introduce the Emmy award-winning Ziggy’s Gift special and describe the animation techniques used in the movie, and White will have a pre-screening of his new film “Endangered Species,” a film that pays homage to the great classical moments in animation history.

Specific details, times and directions to the events, are available on the Animation Festival website at www.2dornot2d.org.

ABOUT THE ANIMATICUS FOUNDATION:
The Animaticus Foundation is a non-profit organization, founded by award-winning animator and author, Tony White. Reflecting a growing need for traditional animation, the Foundation speaks to the contemporary world and commits to the “promotion, education and evolution” of the traditional, hand-drawn animated art form in the age of digital technology. Among the Foundation’s forthcoming services are: workshops and master classes for students and professionals of animation; the production of traditional hand-drawn animated works; and ultimately providing opportunity, resources, and scholarships for motivated animation students, filmmakers, and producers of traditional animation. For more information about the Animaticus Foundation, visit the organization’s website at http://www.animaticus.com

ABOUT ZIGGY:
Ziggy, the lovable "everyman" comic panel, celebrates its 35th year in syndication in 2006, having first appeared in newspapers in June 1971. Tom Wilson of Cincinnati, Ohio, has drawn and written Ziggy since 1987, after the retirement of his father, the senior Tom Wilson, who first created Ziggy as a greeting card character. Distributed through Universal Press Syndicate, a division of Andrews McMeel Universal, Ziggy is published in more than 600 newspapers, reaching 75 million readers daily, and maintains an online presence through Ziggy.com and uclick.com. More than 20 Ziggy cartoon collection books and calendars have been published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC. Ziggy has been selected as the 2006 spokescharacter for the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA) and National Foster Care Awareness Month (May). Ziggy's inspiring message extends to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, where he serves as the full-time official spokescharacter, and to World Food Day, where Wilson creates special-edition comic panels to support the cause.

The Ziggy's Gift DVD animated holiday special from BFS Entertainment & Multimedia Limited earned an Emmy Award in its only TV broadcast and has been honored with The Family Magazine Group’s Family Choice Award and the National Parenting Center Seal of Approval.