LightWave 3D® Artists Bring Home Two Emmy®s

For the Seventh Year in a Row a Primetime Emmy Winner for VFX includes LightWave® Visuals; Upper Midwest Academy Chapter Honors 3D Animated Series "Auto-B-Good"

San Antonio, Texas – November 1, 2005 -- NewTek, Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, congratulates the LightWave® artists who this year won a 57th Annual Primetime Emmy® award and an Upper Midwest Chapter Emmy. For the seventh year in a row, a winner of one of the Special Visual Effects category Emmys used LightWave 3D® as part of their effects arsenal. Kevin Kutchaver of HimAnI Productions was among the artists receiving the Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects for a Series, for the effects on last season's pilot episode of Lost. The artists at Wet Cement Productions received an Emmy from the Upper Midwest Chapter of the National Television Academy in the category Outstanding Graphics and Animation - Non-News, for their work on season one of Auto-B-Good, a 3D animated children's series which is currently airing on public television.

"We're very pleased to extend our congratulations to these talented and creative artists as they receive this extraordinary recognition," said Jay Roth, President of NewTek's 3D Products Division. "These projects represent the range and flexibility we have designed into LightWave from the ground up. The perfect photoreality required by the shots for a live-action production and a colorful and stylized imaginary world for children made real and alive, attest to how LightWave's modeling, animation and rendering capability frees the artist to achieve any vision they can conceive."

Kevin Kutchaver is an industry veteran with more than 21 years experience in visual effects, and credits in 150 film productions, including Hellboy, both recent Scooby Doo films, and X2. For Lost, LightWave was used by Kutchaver's HimAnI team for a variety of 3D elements, environments and mattes, including the noted scene wherein shaking and cracking trees marked the passage of a mysterious, powerful being, sent chills down viewers' spines and revealed that the castaways were on no ordinary island.

"We have always used LightWave at HimAnI, and at the previous company I founded, Flat Earth Productions," said Kutchaver. "We used LightWave back then to help us push the TV envelope with up to 300 shots per episode and 500 per month for series such as Hercules and Xena. These days we do a wide variety of film and television work, and for both, LightWave's ease of use and feature set let us bring in our shots on time, with absolute quality and exactly the look our clients need. Not to mention it's a lot easier to break 20-foot palm trees in the computer than in real life!"

Wet Cement Productions is based in Edina, MN, and creates family-friendly entertainment for a worldwide market. Auto-B-Good is a series of short stories set in a town where the citizens are automobiles of all vintages, and designed to teach lessons in character for children. All the animation for the series was accomplished with LightWave 3D. Wet Cement Productions is currently finishing up work on season 2 of Auto-B-Good, which will start airing the first week of January 2006.

"It is LightWave's toolset that has allowed us to realize our dream of telling meaningful stories for a global audience," said Charles Meyer, Executive Vice President and Director of Wet Cement Productions. "NewTek is responsive in meeting the needs of users in a variety of fields, and has made LightWave the versatile and powerful tool that we can use to create entire imaginary worlds just the way we see them in our mind's eye. LightWave lets us bring our productions in on time and on budget - while our artists win awards for the quality of creative vision they've been able to put into the work."

Since 1993, this marks the 13th Primetime Emmy win by artists who relied on NewTek's Emmy-winning LightWave 3D as a key tool in their animation/visual effects arsenal. LightWave users have also won regional Emmy awards in a variety of categories. Previously NewTek had reported that three of the five nominees in the series category for this year used LightWave, but subsequently learned that among the different effects companies involved with the show, HimAnI used LightWave on the nominated pilot episode of Lost, bringing the total to four of the five nominees. For the years 2000 through 2004, all five series category nominees were produced using LightWave 3D as a key VFX tool.

57th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards
Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series

Lost • Pilot (Part 1 & Part 2) • ABC • Touchstone Television
Kevin Blank, Visual Effects Supervisor
Mitch Suskin, Visual Effects Supervisor
Archie Ahuna, Special Effects Supervisor
Jonathan Spencer Levy, CGI Supervisor
Benoit “Ben” Girard, CGI Supervisor
Laurent M. Abecassis, CGI Supervisor
Kevin Kutchaver, Visual Effects Compositor (HimAnI Productions)
Steve Fong, Visual Effects Compositor
Bob Lloyd, Visual Effects Compositor

Upper Midwest Chapter, National Television Academy
Outstanding Graphics and Animation - Non-News

Auto-B-Good • Wet Cement Productions
Charles Meyer, Director
Joth Loder, Animation Director
Mark Dunshee, Technical Director
Matt Meyer, Lead Animator

Pricing and Availability
LightWave® [8] is currently available for Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X, for a suggested retail price of US$795. Registered owners of LightWave® [7] or earlier may upgrade to version [8] for US$395. In addition to our regular retail price offerings, the following special purchase options are available for a limited time:

LightWave Full seats:
- LightWave [8] full seat, PDF manual, Vue 5 Infinite, free update to v9: $795
- LightWave [8] full seat, printed manual, Vue 5 Infinite, free update to v9: $895

For registered owners of LightWave [7.5] or earlier:
- LightWave [8] upgrade, PDF manual, Vue 5 Infinite, free update to v9: $395
- LightWave [8] upgrade, printed manual, Vue 5 Infinite, free update to v9: $495

For Registered owners of LightWave [8]:
- LightWave 3D v9.0 upgrade with PDF manual and Vue 5 Infinite: $395
- LightWave 3D v9.0 with printed manual and Vue 5 Infinite: $495

Those purchasing any LightWave [8] full or upgrade product offering after August 01, 2005 qualify for a free upgrade to LightWave 3D version 9.0 upon its release. For more information or to purchase, visit: http://www.newtek.com or call NewTek Sales at 1-800-368-5441, overseas callers dial +1-210-370-8000. To locate a NewTek Authorized Reseller link to http://www.newtek.com/dealers.

About NewTek
With headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, NewTek is a leading provider of full-featured video editing, live production, presentation, animation and special effects tools including LightWave 3D®, winner of the 2003 Primetime Emmy® Engineering Award, TriCaster™ and VT[4]™. NewTek launched the desktop video revolution in 1990 with the release of the legendary Video Toaster®. The company's products are used worldwide on projects ranging from home video to feature film. Recent television and film projects using NewTek production tools include Serenity, Fantastic Four, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D, Sin City, The Aviator, Aliens of the Deep, "I, Robot", Spiderman 2, Battlestar: Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight. Recent game titles include Ridge Racers, Full Spectrum Warrior, Burnout 3, Doom III, Unreal Tournament, and Age of Mythology.. Website: http://www.newtek.com

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