SpongeBob SquarePants + Sir Mix-a-Lot + Burger King = The viral ad that everybody’s going to be linking to for the next week.

Case in point:

“This isn’t ‘another design conference.’ It’s a meeting of great minds,” tout the promo materials for F5, a conference that takes place next week at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan.

Everything I’ve read about it indicates that F5 is going to be a winning event for artists, and an interesting opportunity to network with an eclectic group of creative professionals.. I also have high hopes for F5 because one of its organizers is Justin Cone, who’s the mastermind behind the must-read blog Motionographer. The F5 site explains that the event “is founded on the belief that true change occurs when you look outside your world and explore new horizons. The festival fosters creative collisions—unexpected insights from sources you didn’t see coming. The goal is nothing less than to change the way you think about your work and your life.”

The line-up of speakers includes:

* Ed Ulbrich, co-founder of multiple Academy Award-winning Digital Domain
* Acclaimed photographer/filmmaker Charlie White
* Jonah Lehrer, editor at large for Seed magazine and author of How We Decide
* MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow
* Media Molecule, celebrated developers of LittleBigPlanet
* Presentations by CG and digital studios including Shilo, Psyop, The Blackheart Gang, and Danny Yount from Kyle Cooper’s studio Prologue

Conference tickets for the two-day event (April 16 and 17) are $280 regular price and $150 for students. Thanks to the generosity of the event’s organizers, Cartoon Brew is giving away TWO FULL PASSES to the festival. If you’re planning to attend and are interested in winning a pass, simply leave a comment in this post by the end of today. The only qualification is that your comment must include a link to your website, and if you don’t have a site (what kind of an artist are you?), then post the link to your LinkedIn or Myspace. The contest will close at 11:59pm tonight and we’ll announce the winners on Wednesday.

For more info about F5, visit the official website at F5Fest.com.

This Friday, the University of Southern California is presenting a free evening of animation-based installations and performances. The location is the brand new Spielberg-Lucas School of Cinematic Arts building where animation installations will fill the theatres, lobbies, and courtyards.

Featured artists include Professor Christine Panushka and Associate Professor Sheila Sofian, along with work by current Hench-DADA graduate students, and guest animation performance & installations by Miwa Matreyek, Jim Ovelmen and Alberto ‘Beto’ Araiza.

The event is on Friday, April 10, 2009 from 7 P.M. to 10 P.M. in the School of Cinematic Arts Complex. Admission is FREE. No reservations necessary.For more information check the USC website.

Here’s a treat. Music historian and record archivist Mike Kieffer sent me a copy of his latest find. It’s the first authorized recording made of Minnie’s Yoo Hoo in 1930 which, Mike says, “…was not released until about January 1931. However, this still predates the next earliest Mickey Mouse song, which is by the Varsity Eight from late 1931. It’s also the only instance I can recall of a piece composed by Carl Stalling issued on a commercial record, other than perhaps children’s records from the 1940s and beyond. I think the vocalist is the bandleader himself, Leo Zollo, but I’m not sure about that. The personnel is apparently unknown, as is the exact recording date, but it’s sometime in May-June of 1930.” Click on the label at left to see it larger, and you can listen to the delightful track here:

Mickey Mouse historian David Gerstein has also uncovered the earliest Mickey Mouse-based sheet music he’s aware of. Says David, “It was published in both England and Germany in 1930. The recording of it that I’ve attached (below) is one that I acquired on a bootleg CD years ago; there, it was credited to musician Leonard Henry and dated 1930 as well. Any British Brew readers who’d like to help me identify label and confirm the 1930 recording date are more than welcome.”

(Thanks to Mike Kieffer and David Gerstein)

It’s a special day when the quality of fan art exceeds the artistry of its animated source material. Then again, with Scooby-Doo, the bar was never set that high to begin with. The entire image — possibly NSFW — is after the jump. If you know who the artist is, please share the info in the comments.

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The boys at Spline Doctors, a loose teaching collective comprised of Pixar animators, hosted an animation contest on their site that asked readers to animate a certain infamous piece of dialogue by Christian Bale. Their call for entries generated over twenty-five entries. Go here to see the winners along with all of the other contest entries.

On a sidenote, the antics of Christian Bale are proving to be rich fodder for animation artists around the world. French illustrator Laurent Blachier and BusterDesign.tv also created this Christian Bale piece.

Steve Stanchfield has done it again. An animator, educator, cartoon historian and film preservationist, Stanchfield has spent the last few years curating several first-class DVD compilations devoted to the long-forgotten New York-based Van Beuren Studios. His previous efforts include sets devoted to their Aesop’s Fables, Little King and Cubby Bear series. His latest DVD is his best yet: Van Beuren’s Toddle Tales and Rainbow Parade Cartoons. This collection features the best from Van Bueren’s latter years, 1934-1935, when Burt Gillett, Tom Palmer and Ted Eshbaugh were brought in to revitalize the cartoon shorts. They came up with Toddle Tales, which combined live action-and-animation with sometimes disturbing results, and the Rainbow Parade cartoons, which used a limited two-color palette in the most garish ways imaginable. Highlights of the set include the best versions of these cartoons I’ve ever seen (many with long lost original titles). The Sunshine Makers, in particular, never looked so good - it’s worth the price of the set alone. There are rare model sheets, home movie boxes, deleted scenes and more in the Bonus section. Stanchfield puts a lot of TLC into these DVD collections - and it shows. I recommend this highly to anyone, especially those who love 1930s-style animation.

Last week Amid posted several Disney industrial films and got quite a nice reaction, so I thought I’d try posting another one - this one not from Disney. Sometimes we dwell too much on the commercial and entertainment films produced by Hollywood and New York’s animation industry, but it was industrial and educational films like these that were the backbone of the business in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

Rodney (posted below) is typical of the kind of bread and butter product produced by small studios that kept animators alive between larger assignments. Lee Blair’s New York studio, Film Graphics, produced this one allowing veteran animator Lu Guarnier a rare chance to direct. Don Towsley, Cliff Auguston and Preston Blair animated. Jack Shaindlin, a well known stock music composer, provides a classic 1950s score.

Cataloging the hundreds (thousands?) of ephemeral films like these is the next great frontier in researching animation. An important part of the history of the medium is contained within these - and many of them are still lost, neglected or forgotten.