Important Announcement from the CAEAA: Date & Qualifying Year Change for the 2nd Annual Elans

VANCOUVER August 30, 2007 - The 2nd Annual Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts (CAEAA) has announced its decision to move their Elans Awards Show to February 2008. The exact date will fall before the Oscars and will be announced in September.

With the addition of International Categories into the CAEAA and the constant correspondence the Producers built throughout this past year with their awarded industries around the world, awareness of the Elans and the opportunity to participate in the show grew into an enormous network of Video Game, Animation and Digital Art Schools. Along with this daily growth of contacts from around the world came a need to expand the qualifying year in order to allow time for submission for nomination.

As the mandate of the Producers for The Elans is to create an Oscar-equivalent Awards Show for both the Animation and Video Game Industries in one night, following some of the Oscar's setup is imperative in order to produce a show like it. The Oscar's qualifying year is January 1st –December 31st, 12 PM midnight PST; the Elan's was set at July 1st – June 30th, which the Producers had planned to change next year but with the overwhelming response from the two industries it awards, has chosen to make the change more immediate.

By resetting the Elan's future qualifying year to January 1st to December 31st, this year's participants have an 18 month qualifying year. The 2nd Annual Elans will accept submissions for productions and games made publicly available (student's work need not be publicly available, only completed) from July 1, 2006 to December 31, 2007. This extension of time will ensure the industries' ability to fully participate in the Elans, making the second staging of this awards show an exciting one guaranteed to provide participants and viewers with the very best from all around the world and expediting the growth of the Elans into an awards show the producers could not have otherwise hoped to achieve for years-to-come. "Had we left the qualifying year the way it was set," explains Elan Producer Holly Carinci, "highly-anticipated games such as Halo 3, Crysis, Assassin's Creed, Guitar Hero III, Need for Speed ProStreet, Super Mario Galaxy, BioShock ... none of these and many more could have qualified which would have been a horrible shame." Carinci assures those that have submitted already that their submissions are official and will be entered into the Judicial Process in January unless otherwise instructed. Special arrangements can be made with the CAEAA staff if a studio wishes to replace their submissions with others.

The 2nd Annual Elans will still be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada at The Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts and their Official Hotelier remains The Sutton Place Hotel, Vancouver (one of only two AAA Five Diamond Hotels in all of Canada).

The CAEAA along with their Event Partners Electronic Arts (EA), Autodesk/Annex Pro, N-GAGE by NOKIA, Ernst & Young and the British Columbia Provincial Government are looking forward to hosting an awards show that rivals the largest in the world. Backing their efforts are the phenomenal supporters of the Elans which includes Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang LLP, Foundation 9/Backbone Entertainment, Radical Entertainment, Next Level Games, Studio B Productions, Mercury Filmworks, Action Pants, Atomic Robot Games, Voicebox Productions, Western Imperial Magnetics, 90 Degree Software, David Kaye Productions, Raven Tales, Selkirk College, The Art Institute of Vancouver, Emily Carr Institute, Sheridan College, Vancouver Film School, School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SFU), University of Washington Department of Communications, BC Film, Vancouver Economic Development Commission, Tourism Vancouver, BC Innovation Council, Uniglobe Advance Travel and Elan statuette artist Dean Lauzé of D'Arts as well as FedEx, Paramount Limousines, Chloe Angus Designs, Moore's Clothing for Men and the Awards Auditing firm, Buckley Dodds & Assoc.s.

"As the Movie Industry goes to Hollywood for its Oscars, so will the world of Video Gaming and Animation come to Canada for their Elans."

- Holly Carinci, Founder & Producer, CAEAA