CAEAA Puts Out Call for Jurors

For Immediate Release





VANCOUVER June 21, 2006 - The producers of the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts 2006 (CAEAA) are inviting experts in the fields of animation and video gaming, as well as full-time educators of both, to participate as Jurors in the selection of four final nominees for each of the 43 categories they will be awarding in Vancouver, British Columbia on September 14th at the River Rock Show Theatre. Dubbed "the Canadian Oscars for Video Gaming and Animation", the high-end awards evening will honour Canadian excellence in 15 Animation Categories, 13 Student Categories and 17 Electronic Gaming Categories which include 2 Viewer's Choice Awards for "Animated Hero of the Year" and "Animated Villain of the Year". The winners of each category will be determined through two processes, the first being the Nomination Panels (or "Jurors") each made up of 5 creative and technical peers who have the responsibility of narrowing the number of nominees per award category to four. To ensure the integrity of the Awards, the gaming and animation categories will be judged by panelists currently working full time in academia. Each of the student award categories will be judged by panelists drawn from the industry. Each panel will have a leader who is responsible for assembling a panel of instructors / professors / professionals qualified to judge the categories for which the panel is responsible. Panelists will be selected based on their credentials, not their employer, teaching institution or geographic location. The final nominees selected will be announced on Tuesday, August 8th, the same day the much-anticipated official name of the award and the statuette by commissioned Canadian artist Dean Lauzé are revealed. The Panelists will also be invited to submit a ballot indicating who they believe should be the winner out of the four final nominees for each category. These ballots will be added to those from the panel of media critics who form the judging panels overseen by Head Judge, Todd Mowatt. Writers and critics from prominent animation publications will judge the animation category finalists, and those from gaming publications will judge the gaming finalists (including student categories). All ballots will be sent directly and privately to the accounting firm, Buckley Dodds, to tally and deliver onstage September 14th, a la Oscar-style. "While meeting with our Foundation Sponsors, I posed the question as to whether-or-not we open the judicial process to the world," explains CAEAA Producer, Holly Carinci. "I was very pleased and impressed by the confidence with which they unanimously agreed to the idea. Canadians working and training in the in the electronic and animated arts are extremely talented and they're not afraid to be judged by the rest of the world." The CAEAA opened their award submissions on Monday, June 5th. Canadians citizens living anywhere in the world are invited to submit their work. Submission deadline for nominations is Friday, July 14th. Sponsors already behind the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts 2006 include EA, Ubisoft, A2M, Autodesk, Foundation 9, Studio B, Voicebox, Nitrogen, Bardel, Western Imperial Magnetics, David Kaye Productions, Budget Monks, British Columbia Film, Sheridan Institute, VanArts Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, Selkirk College, The Art Institute of Vancouver, and Dean Lauzé of D'Arts. For more information on the first year of this high tech/high glam awards event, visit www.caeaa.com.

- end - Media contact: Holly Carinci, HollyWords Publicity 604.921.4744 / 604.218.3993

holly@hwpublicity.com / holly@caeaa.com