The Internets will never be the same. Harry McCracken has launched the long-awaited Scrappyland.com, a site dedicated to celebrating the Depression-era monochromatic goodness of the 1930s Mintz Studio cartoon star Scrappy. The folks at Sony/Columbia prefer to horde the classic Scrappy cartoons in their vaults rather than allowing the public to view and appreciate them, but fortunately Harry has single-handedly lifted Scrappy out of obscurity and brought 21st century awareness to one of the pinnacles of 1930s American culture.

The new TIM BURTON stop-motion feature is coming and it looks good: see the trailer HERE.

Set the TiVo tonight: Brewmaster Jerry Beck will appear as a guest on The Screen Savers which appears on Comcast’s digital channel, G4techTV. The Screen Savers is a daily live broadcast that features the latest internet/video game/consumer electronics news. I’m not sure what they are gonna ask me about, but I’ll be plugging my new book and the BREW. The show airs live at 4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern - and will rerun later at midnight and sometime over the weekend.

Oh, log this one under super-ridiculous!My pals over at Animation Magazine sent me the heads up on today’s New York Times article, covering the conservative right going after Nick’s SpongeBob as a possible symbol of gay America and therefore bad for kids. Good grief! Can’t sponges hold hands with starfish anymore????!!! Well…on the upside, at least it’s keeping cartoons on the front page of NY Times online! The Times article is HERE (reg. req’d). Other reportage (no reg. required) HERE.

Academy Award winning animator Gene Deitch has a few thoughts on THE POLAR EXPRESS and the definition of animation - and I am taking the liberty of posting them here (because I agree with him):

I’ve been reading in various film journals, and in the popular media that POLAR EXPRESS is being referred to as an “animated film,” and is hoping for an Oscar in the Animation Feature category. This greatly concerns me, as a threat to our art and craft.We’ve seen plenty of technological development in animation, from the praxinoscope, through paper and cel animation, CGI computer animation, Flash, etc. but they all adhere to the same basic principles. Whatever the merits or demerits of POLAR EXPRESS as a film, I don’t believe that Motion Capture, being basically the same as any live action film, that is action created in real time, is consistent with the definition of cinematic animation. I would say the same for string marionette film, TEAM AMERICA, which is also not cinema animation.Many years ago John Halas invited me to construct a technical definition of cinema animation, which I attempted to do, avoiding all limited terms such as “frames” or “film,” but getting down to the very basics.POLAR EXPRESS, it seems to me, opens up the possibility of a whole new category, which may possibly develop; Motion Capture, as a way of creating a special kind of virtual reality. Whether it’s a good thing, or a blind alley, is another subject for discussion. In the meantime, here follows my personal attempt to define what animation basically is, technically. So far, no one has challenged it, and it has been part of my book on animation for many years.”CINEMATIC ANIMATION: The recording of individually created phases of imagined action in such a way as to achieve the illusion of motion when shown at a constant, predetermined rate, exceeding that of human persistence of vision.”

Good friend of the BREW, anime historian Fred Patten was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday, diagnosed with pneumonia.Fred is a Japanese animation expert par excellence, who writes regular columns on anime for NEWTYPE USA, ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE, and numerous other publications. He is very active at comics and sci-fi conventions and his book, WATCHING ANIME, READIING MANGA was just published last month.I know he would love to hear from his friends - donations of science fiction novels would probably be welcome as he recuperates. Fred can be reached at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital, 4650 Lincoln Blvd., Marina del Rey, CA 90292 or 310-823-8911 ext. 1409Get well, Fred!

Just discovered that art director/background designer Dan Krall (SAMURAI JACK, FOSTER’S HOME FOR IMAGINARY FRIENDS) has a site up at DanKrall.com. Krall’s drawings are funny and appealing (in a somewhat Ronald Searle-ish manner), and his paintings have a fine sense of design and color. The only thing the site needs is more of his artwork.

Following a battle with cancer, animation artist Dan Lee passed away last weekend at age 35. He had most recently been doing story and character design at Pixar where his credits included FINDING NEMO, TOY STORY 2 and A BUG’S LIFE. Jamie Baker and Ronnie del Carmen remember Dan’s life and work on their blogs. Recent photos of Dan taken by Amber MacLean can be found HERE.

UPDATE: Enrico Casarosa remembers Dan on his BLOG.