The TrueMajority campaign, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerryís Ice Cream, is looking for animators, web designers, graphic artists, flash experts, and any other type of new media artist, who would be interested in participating in a design contest.These rich media pieces need to be some combination of entertaining, visually arresting, animated, great sound, clever, informative…engaging enough so that folks want to see them and forward them to friends. The final product can either be included in emails that get passed around or they can be hosted on a web site (like a Flash file) and a link can get passed around.

The goal of the contest is to create an e-mail design that will help change this country for the better in an amusing and fun way, and to get people to join the TrueMajority. There will be five contest winners, who will each receive $10,000 to produce their project! To find out more about TrueMajority, visit our website at [ www.truemajority.com ].

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by Rob Kohr

AXNY/BAAF, if you are unfamiliar with these acronyms you would think that is some clever new onomatopoeia for a sneeze. But actually it stands for Anime Expo New York and Big Apple Anime Fest. During Labor Day weekend there was a mass gathering of Anime aficionados and otoku (the Japanese word for someone who is obsessed with Anime; it is used with disdain in Japan but here in the States the otoku regard it as a compliment). This was actually my first experience with an Anime Expo and I felt that it is a very intriguing sub culture of the animation world that gets almost no coverage from the animation community let alone pop culture.

Earlier in the summer I picked up ANIME by Susanne Napier. The book gave a detailed account of how and why anime is, how it is affected by Japanese culture, how it influences Japanese Culture and also a brief evaluation of the subculture of anime fans in the USA. The book explained that in Japan, animation accounts for nearly 65% of Japan’s total media exposure (which includes films, internet and television). Japan is also the world’s main exporter of animation too. Because Hollywood has a world wide strangle hold on the live action industry, early on Japan attempted to find its own identity; thus the birth of Anime. Ms. Napier’s book delves much further into this any many other issues; it is a definite must read if you want to know more about the worlds largest animation market.

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