If you are anywhere near the Pacific Northwest this weekend, head on over to Spark Animation ‘08, an animation festival and state-of-the-art showcase sponsored by SIGGRAPH ACM Vancouver.

The festival started yesterday and will run through Sunday night. All of the events are ‘a la carte’ so you can select which events you want to attend and buy tickets for those, either online or at the door. Featured guests include Mark Osborne & John Stevenson (directors of Kung Fu Panda), Jimmy Hayward & Steve Martino (directors of Horton Hears a Who!), Ed Hooks (author: Acting for Animators), and me, Jerry Beck (screening The Worst Cartoons Ever! on Saturday night, 7pm at the Vancity Theatre). Bill Plympton’s latest feature, a Marv Newland retrospective and Leslie Iwerks’ The Pixar Story are among the special screenings. A party following my screening is free for all festival-goers - come by and say hello!

Full schedule and ticket ordering info is posted here.

More rare pictures from a stash of Warner Club News I picked up last week.

The Warner Bros. Cartoon Dept. had it’s own building, with its own gate and sercurity on the main lot in Burbank during the 50s and 60s. The building is still standing today. I’m not sure who’s occupying it this year, but it was most recently the headquarters for producers, writers and staff of Everybody Loves Raymond.

To commemorate the 100th birthday of composer Raymond Scott (1908-1994), the folks at his official website, RaymondScott.com, have commissioned one of my favorite caricaturists, Drew Friedman, to create a limted edition portrait of Scott and his Quintette.

Scott is, of course, best known for his jazz compositions (such as Powerhouse) which were heard in numereous Warner Bros. cartoons, George Pal Puppetoons, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Animaniacs and other cartoon series. Scott was a band leader, composer, inventor and electronic music pioneer. Though he personally never wrote music for cartoons, his compositions work perfectly in the medium - and continue to do so today. For more information on Raymond Scott click here.

Anyone been to the post office lately? Anyone still use snail mail?

The postage stamps have gotten a lot better — even if I have no one to mail a letter to I couldn’t resist some of these new commemoratives. This one (above) devoted to Latin Jazz, with the distinctive artwork of Michael Bartalos, really caught my eye. Bartalos’ art is best known (to me) for Nickelodeon and Nick-at-Nite promotional materials, but here it evokes a cool Jim Flora feel.

I also stocked up on the new Art of Disney Imagination set which includes this neat Steamboat Willie, and the Vintage Black Cinema set with several attractive old movie posters. These are pretty nice - too nice to use only for paying my cable and internet bills.

Contest time! We are giving away TWO all-access AnimaPasses (each valued at $200) to next week’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Seeing as how its election season, we’re presenting a politically-flavored photo caption contest. The winners will be the two people who provide the funniest and most Brew-worthy captions (as deemed by Jerry and Amid) for this meeting of the minds from the late-’70s. A few important notes: Please enter a caption below ONLY if you’re planning on attending the festival. ONE entry per person. Contest ends on Thursday evening at 11:59pm EST.

Below is the stunningly brilliant conclusion of the online animated series Octocat.

When I posted the first episode last March, I wrote that it was the creation of 13-year-old Randy Peters. With the release of this final episode, filmmaker David O’Reilly has revealed that he is, in fact, “Randy Peters.” O’Reilly writes on his blog:

“I’m sure I’ll be accused of misleading people again, but I won’t apologize for that. Why? Because you’ve all proved one vitally important point: audiences don’t need polished, slick animation to find a story engaging. They are happy to follow the worst animated, worst designed and worst dubbed film of all time, and still laugh and cry and do all the things you do watching a so-called “high end” film. Its amazing, I’ve never been so excited about independent animation.”

Watch the entire series in HD on Vimeo.

Another great photo op from the pages of The Warner Club News (December 1961). Mel Blanc and Elmer Bernstein! Blanc is still recovering from his January 1961 auto accident, receiving The Golden Carrot Award, which is pictured up close and in color in my book Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Guide.

No particular reason that I’m posting this photo other than I’ve never seen it before and figured it’d be fun to share with everybody. Walt, of course, is instantly recognizable, but the other guy is somebody who I often refer to as the greatest cartoonist of the 20th century, Ronald Searle. The pic is from July 1957. I’m not entirely sure but it appears that they’re on the Zorro set. Click on it for bigger version.