Ralph Bakshi and his Mighty Mouse crew in a TV news piece circa 1988. John K., Jim Reardon, Eddie Fitzgerald, Tom Minton and Kent Butterworth can be spotted. I don’t know what show this is from or who posted it, but it’s priceless.

(Thanks, Jeff Pidgeon)

The Van Eaton Gallery is holding a special event on Saturday March 14th, a tribute to Iwao Takamoto. The exhibit not only showcases original character designs and artwork (non-Animation and Animation) by Takamoto, but other work found in his estate, including pieces by Alex Toth (original Model Sheets), Ray Aragon (Last Of The Curlews) and Floro Dery (The Last Halloween).

The event will also serve as a publication party for the new biography, Iwao Takamoto My Life with a Thousand Characters, copies of the book be on hand and will be signed by the author (Michael Mallory), as well as Willie Ito and Barbara Takamoto. You can check out the exhibit’s artwork online and pre-order books beginning March 5, 2009. The event is open to the public, March 14th from 5pm to 9pm, however you must RSVP because space is limited. The gallery is located at 13613 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, California. The RSVP number is (818) 788-2357. For more information contact the Van Eaton Galleries.

This morning I appeared on the Fox Business channel to discuss the rivalry between Pixar and DreamWorks. The other guest was esteemed animation director (and fellow blogger) Michael Sporn. It was impossible to say anything revelatory or original in the brief timespan of the segment and they managed to misspell my name onscreen, but I don’t appear on TV often so I’m posting the video here for posterity. The real excitement of the morning was in the green room where I tried to eat a bagel while sitting next to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and having his security detail breathing down my neck.

Congrats to Kunio Kato who won the Oscar last night for his animated short The House of Small Cubes (La Maison en Petits Cubes). He gets bonus points for thanking his pencil in his acceptance speech and also for the funny reference at the end.

Below is Kato’s Oscar-winning short in two parts:

Veteran animator Randy Cartwright, who is currently working on Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, has released a useful iPhone application designed specifically for animators called the Animation Timer. He describes on his website what it does:

Timing is very important in animation. In order to animate convincingly you must know how many frames each part of an action takes.

Animators can use a stopwatch to time out actions but there has always been an annoying problem. Stopwatches show time as 1/100ths per second but movie film runs at 24 frames per second. To find out how many frames you need to do a tiresome calculation containing 41.66667 each time.

I’ve always wanted a stopwatch that would show the time in exactly the format I need so I decided, what the hey, I might as well make one, so here it is.

For more details, visit Randy’s Animation Timer website. The application is available for $2.99 on the iTunes store. Search for “animation timer”.

The Oscar winners were announced tonight. The winner for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM was Pixar’s WALL•E. For BEST ANIMATED SHORT, the winner was: La Maison en Petits Cubes - Kunio Kato. Jennifer Anniston and Jack Black presented the awards, and introduced an confusing montage of clips from animated features released in 2008 (which included scenes from Space Chimps and The Clone Wars, two films which their producers deemed unfit to submit for Oscar qualification - had they done so, five animated features would have been nominated instead of three).

This crazy image above is from a vintage Japanese jigsaw puzzle, currently being offered on ebay. It’s one of several nifty items recently listed by Japanese seller kenta_jpn.

There are several rare vintage books featuring classic “western” cartoon characters (and some 1960’s anime titles) featuring many wonderfully-off-model illustrations within each. There’s also a very cool Huckleberry Hound board game (aka “The Unique Dog Huckle Game”) made by Nintendo(!) in the 1960’s. These items are all “Buy It Now” listings — so I’m unsure how long they’ll remain available for sale or viewing - so go there now!

(Thanks, Andrew Harlow)

No, it’s not a bunch of crazed furries. It’s Frank Conniff and the cast of Cartoon Dump, our monthly live comedy and cartoons showcase in Hollywood. This month we will have guest comedian Dana Gould (The Simpsons) adding to the madness. Join Moodsy, Compost Brite, Cue Card Goddess and me, Jerry Beck, Tuesday, February 24th at 8 PM, for an evening of hilarious comedy, demented songs, and really, really awful cartoons — at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. (two blocks west of Vermont). Map here, reserve tickets here. See you there!