Galicia based animation studio Dygra plans a slate of digital 3D projects.

Dygra Films will release one film per year starting with Spirit Of The Forest in 2008, a sequel to The Animal Forest (2001), the first European film to be made entirely using CGI, which achieved $2m at the box office. This will be followed by the Christmas themed Holy Night! in 2009.

'Our priority at the moment is to close celebrities for Spirit Of The Forest, hopefully before Berlin. When we have casting done for Spirit, we will start announcing names for Holy Night!,' Dygra's Lucas Mackey told ScreenDaily.com.

LA based Fantastic Films International is selling Spirit, about a group of animals fighting to save a forest from an evil businessman's plans to build a motorway through it, and is close to signing deals in the US, UK and Japan. 'Now is the perfect timing for a film like Spirit Of The Forest, a great adventure with a strong ecological message,' adds Mackey.

Dygra is working with the Kinepolis Group and the Dolby laboratories to make all its films using digital 3D. 'This technology is the next revolution of cinema, after the arrival of colour 50 years ago. You get the sense that you can actually touch the characters,' says Manolo Gomez, director of Dygra, who is producing Spirit Of The Forest and Holy Night!.

Holy Night!, which sees the characters of a nativity scene declare war on their Christmas tree counterparts, will be completed in the summer of 2009 ahead of a proposed worldwide Christmas release.

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