If you want to listen to the full version of the song “The World is saying Hello!”, you need to signup and login to Hello Kitty Online the MMOG. Please visit http://www.hellokittyonline.com for details.

Have fun!

The DigiCon6 Awards, organized by Japan TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), has been one of the most recognized animation awards in Japan.  The award is opened to Japan and other Asian countries including China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India, Taiwan, Jordan, Thailand and Malaysia.

There there a total of 2,248 entries for the 10th DigiCon6 Awards.

By the way our Hello Kitty Online has also won the Hong Kong ICT Awards for Best Computer Graphics.  What a great and happy day for us all yesterday!

Here are some photos that we would like to share with you:

Here are Philip Lau (Creative Leader of Dream Cortex) and Ken Cheng (Animation Team Lead) who just have received the awards from Mr Alan Wan (Secretary of the HK Comics and Animation Federation).

Philip, Ken and Thomas (Sanrio Digital) with the 5 awards that we won.

Here’s the Dream Cortex animation team, ready to open a champagne and have a celebration. Well done guys!

Hong Kong, 10 February 2009 – Dream Cortex (www.dreamcortex.com) today announced that its 3D CGI animated series “The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends” (Season Two), produced in partnership with Sanrio Digital (Hong Kong) (www.sanriodigital.com), won awards in four categories at the 2008 Hong Kong ICT Awards. The awards are Best 3D Animation, Best TV Series, Best Modeling & Texturing, and Best Lighting & Rendering.

The Hong Kong ICT Awards (www.hkictawards.hk) is a yearly collaborative effort among digital entertainment organizations, ICT professional bodies, academia and the Government to select and honor Hong Kong’s finest accomplishments in IT and digital entertainment. The presentation ceremony was held on February 9, 2009 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

“The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends” is licensed by Sanrio Digital (Hong Kong), who shares the awards with Dream Cortex. This is the first Sanrio television production made in Hong Kong, and the first Sanrio series made entirely in CGI (Computer Generated Imaging). “The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends” offers an entertaining and often humorous way for children to learn about social interaction and behaviour while following the adventures of some of the world’s best-loved and most recognizable Sanrio characters including Hello Kitty, Dear Daniel, My Melody, Keroppi, Badtz Maru and Pochacco.

“We are very pleased and honored to be selected by the Hong Kong ICT Awards for the second year in a row, and this year with four wins in four categories. These awards are a strong recognition of our animation team’s creative talents,” said Philip Lau, Creative Leader of Dream Cortex and Co-Director of “The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends”.

“Season two of our Hello Kitty animation series is bigger, more entertaining, and packed with even better CGI than the first season,” said David Kim, Business Strategic Director of Sanrio Digital. “These multiple Hong Kong ICT Awards are a prestigious acknowledgement of the outstanding production work carried out by Dream Cortex.”

The first season of “The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends” aired in various territories, including Italy, France, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Singapore, Philippine, Thailand and Hong Kong. The second season started airing in Italy in September 2008 and will soon start airing in other territories.

“The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends” is co-directed by Dream Cortex Creative Leader Philip Lau and Emmy Award nominee Matthew Swanson. Songs were written and composed by Hollywood based composer Greg Chun.

About Dream Cortex
Dream Cortex is one of Hong Kong’s premier digital content creation companies. As one of the pillars of the renowned Cyberport complex, Dream Cortex offers a state-of-the-art 3D animation and production environment coupled with industry leading digital media post-production and distribution infrastructure. Other creative services offered by Dream Cortex include PC and next-generation console game art design, web design, and interactive application development. For more information please visit www.dreamcortex.com.

About Sanrio Digital (Hong Kong) Ltd.
Sanrio Digital was founded in 2006, as a joint venture between Typhoon Games (HK) Ltd. and Sanrio Wave Hong Kong Co. Ltd. Sanrio Digital handles the expansion of Sanrio intellectual property assets into various digital and online media, capitalizing on over three decades of Sanrio original material. The company holds rights to produce offline products based on its online productions, providing synergy between the Sanrio traditional offline business and its digital venture. For more information please visit www.sanriodigital.com.

Press Contact:
Benjamin Yiu
Dream Cortex
Phone: +852 2534 0807
Email: pr@dreamcortex.com

Other than the television categories, Kung Fu Panda is pretty much nominated in all the rest of the categories.  Seems like the panda is going to be the big winner of the Annie Awards.

Check out the Annie Awards web site here for nominations by category.

When the game becomes available in Europe next year there will be European versions of the TV Ad in French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Hello Kitty: Big City Dreams is a fun, exciting and cute adventure for the Nintendo DS, featuring the hugely popular Hello Kitty characters and several mini-games. Hello Kitty: Big City Dreams is distributed by Atari, Inc. in North America under an exclusive multi-year distribution deal between Atari and Empire Interactive.

The clip also came in 4th place for “Most Discussed (All Time)”, 5th place for “Top Rated (All Time)”, and 9th place for “Most Responded (All Time)”.

The collaboration, through an unique application built on the Facebook Platform, including a limited duration version of Autodesk Maya, already started on 17th Nov and will run through 30th Jan 2009. Facebook users will be given the opportunities to vote for their favorite animations, starting on 24th Nov. A compelling short could eventually be turned into a full-length movie.

For more details, check out the Mass Animation page at http://www.facebook.com/massanimation.

Available in English language and subtitles.