GoAnimate.com Adds New Star Trek Characters

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 5, 2009 -- GoAnimate.com, the online platform that enables everyone to create their own customizable animations, today announced that it has expanded its roster of official Star Trek characters to include several characters key to the Star Trek backstory, in honor of the new hit film. GoAnimate.com has collaborated with CBS Consumer Products to add five new classic characters to its already stellar Star Trek channel - Nurse Chapel, Gorn, Mara, and two Klingon crewmen. And to celebrate the addition of these new characters, in conjunction with honoring the theme of the new film, GoAnimate.com today announces its latest contest - "The Backstory".

Gorn vs. Kirk
Gorn vs. Kirk

Each contest submission must tell the backstory of either Nurse Chapel, Gorn, or Mara. How did they first come to interact with the members of the Enterprise? Why did Nurse Chapel choose to work aboard the Enterprise? What is Gorn's home planet like? Why did Mara choose to marry Kang?

The contest dates are 12:01 AM June 3, through 11:59 PM June 17. Any animations made before or after these dates are ineligible. Up until 11:59 AM June 23 users will have the opportunity to continue to share their and other users' animations. Winners will be announced Wednesday, June 24.

Rules:
1. Entries may feature the backstory of Nurse Chapel, Gorn, Mara, or a combination of the three. These three characters will be made available for the duration of the contest, after which point they will be made premium characters available for GoPoints.
2. Four Grand Prizes will be given for the best Nurse Chapel backstory, the best Gorn backstory, the best Mara backstory, and the best combination backstory.
i. The Four Grand Prizes will be selected by a panel of judges from the staffs of CBS and GoAnimate.
3. Four First Prizes will be given - one for each of the categories mentioned in (#2).
i. The Four First Prizes will be given to the Most Shared Animations (animations shared on outside networks).
4. Animations must be at least one minute long.
5. Animations without music and/or sound effects will not be considered.
6. Animations may feature characters from all licensed channels.
7. Entries must be tagged with "backstorycontest" in order to be eligible.


Prizes:
1. Four (4) Grand Prize Winners will receive copies of Star Trek UNO, Star Trek SceneIt, and a Blu-Ray Star Trek DVD
2. Four (4) First Prize Winners will receive a choice of Star Trek Scrabble OR All About Star Trek Trivia

"Audiences everywhere have had an overwhelming response to the new film, and even before the film hit theaters, we saw the Star Trek community embrace the ability to create their own Star Trek animations with GoAnimate's platform," said Liz Kalodner, Executive Vice President and General Manager, CBS Consumer Products. "Thousands of Star Trek animations have been created since we first partnered with GoAnimate, and we are extremely excited to see fans embracing this new creative outlet. With the addition of these new characters, we want to empower fans to create stories in the vein of the new film - exploring the intriguing backstories behind these characters."

The New Faces, and their Backstories
The new Star Trek characters that are available immediately for all users, and which are eligible candidates for GoAnimate.com's "The Backstory" contest, are:


* Nurse Chapel - Nurse Chapel appeared in an episode during the first season of The Original Season (TOS) and soon after became a regular character. She served as head nurse under Chief Medical Officer Dr. Leonard McCoy on the USS Enterprise. In later films she appeared as a full-fledged doctor (and in the most recent film as a one-line off-screen cameo). She sought after a position in the Starfleet in the hopes to find her missing fiancé, Dr. Roger Korby. Despite her love for her fiancé Chapel also had an infatuation with Spock, and when she once admitted her feelings in the episode "The Naked Time" Spock confessed his inability to return her feelings.
* Gorn - The Gorn are a race of intelligent reptilian humanoids. The Gorn captain character became one of the most popular aliens on Star Trek, appearing only in one classic episode ("Arena") on TOS. A hissing, slow-moving but lethal beast, the Gorn captain was quite cunning and devious.
* Mara - Mara was the Klingon wife of Captain Kang and a science officer aboard his battle cruiser. As a product of 22nd century genetic engineering, Mara was descended from Klingons affected with the augment virus created in 2154. Mara was the first appearance of a Klingon female and, although never confirmed, it is very possible that Mara was the mother of Dax, son of Kang.
* Two Klingon crewmen - Klingons are a warrior race in the Star Trek universe. They are recurring villains in TOS, and have appeared in all five spinoff series and seven feature films. Intended to be antagonists for the crew of the Enterprise, the Klingons ended up a close ally of humanity and the United Federation of Planets in later television series.


To see the new characters, and to download images, please visit: http://press.GoAnimate.com.

"After seeing how enthusiastic the Star Trek community has been about the ability to create their own animated adventures, we immediately started thinking about what we could do next to give fans more of what they want," said Alvin Hung, Founder and CEO, GoAnimate. "Like millions of others, we loved the new Star Trek film, and were inspired to add the characters that play important roles in the backstory - and in true GoAnimate fashion - we decided to add a contest to reward the amazing creativity that we regularly see from our community. So get to work on those backstories - we can't wait to review them!"

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