The 17th annual edition of Anima Mundi, South America’s largest animation festival, is coming up this July in Rio and São Paulo. The deadline for short film submissions has already passed, but they are still accepting entries for Web and cell phone animated works.

The festival is progressive in its embrace of new media and has been running both of these categories for a number of years. Marcos Magalhaes, one of the co-founders of Anima Mundi, tells me that, “The Anima Mundi Web contest is celebrating its 10th edition (being one of the first of its kind on the Internet) and Anima Mundi Cell is in its fifth year. Both contests are very popular and disputed among Brazilian animators (open to beginners and professionals) but we want more international submissions this year!”

If you’ve created recent work for the Internet or cell phones, the festival will accept submissions until May 25. Entries can conveniently be uploaded online to their server. Rules and on-line entry forms for both competitions are available on their website AnimaMundi.com.br.

Yooouuutuuube.com is a site that allows users to create a frame-by-frame video wall display using any YouTube video link. The effect is striking if you plug in a fast-cutting video like the one for this electronica song that uses sounds from Alice in Wonderland. I can envision animators coming up with some novel ways of utilizing this display format.

Forbes.com just posted a rather flimsy column about animated features, discussing how much money they make and claiming there are “45 or 50 fully 3D feature-length, computer-animated films in production today, ready for release over the next couple of years”. Really? That many?

They also posted a slideshow of 10 Animated Movies Worth a Billion. Seems to me they left a few off the list… but why quibble over a couple of billion more or less?

It’s been a while since I’ve plugged an animator’s art blog — but Juanmanuel Urbina, an animation director in Colombia, has one that put a smile on my face. Check out his work on Juanmanimation.

The blurry image above is a frame from the “lost” ending to the early Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare-um Scare-um. David Gerstein found the missing sequence while researching this title recently at a major film archive — and now he’s written a post about how he discovered it on Ramapith: The Prehistoric Pop Culture Blog, his new website.

Gerstein, whose books include Mickey And The Gang and Nine Lives To Live: Classic Felix the Cat, is one of the most knowledgeable writers and historians of animation. His new blog will be worth checking on a regular basis.

Fans, Friends and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age may be this year’s must-read book for anybody who makes creative content on the Internet. Everybody, including the Brewmasters, constantly preaches that the future for artists is on the Internet, but how exactly can an artist establish a fan base, generate revenue, and create a reputation on the Internet?

Scott Kirsner, Variety writer and editor of the invaluable CinemaTech blog, breaks it down in his new book by offering case studies of thirty visual artists, comedians, animators, documentary filmmakers, musicians and writers. I haven’t seen the book yet, but I’m sure that it’s not going to offer many easy-to-follow formulas. Even the traditional media gatekeepers, with their hundreds of millions of dollars, have yet to figure out a formula for taming the Internet. What the book will likely show though is that there are countless different models that indie media makers, including animators, can use to connect with an audience online. Unlimited opportunities await artists on the Internet, and this book should serve as an invaluable handbook for any creative soul who is brave enough to venture into this uncharted frontier.

The website for Fans, Friends and Followers offers the book for purchase in multiple formats including Kindle and PDF, and a paperback version is available on Amazon.

The author, Scott Kirsner, has kindly provided Cartoon Brew an exclusive excerpt from an interview in the book with JibJab founders Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, and how they’ve found unconventional ways of generating revenue from their animation work:

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Director Michel Gondry, who occasionally employs animation in his music videos, has launched a new website at MichelGondry.com. The most interesting feature on the site is that he’s offering to draw a portrait of anybody for $19.95. The samples on the site are pretty crude, but that’s besides the point. I’m impressed by the savviness of Gondry in choosing to interact with his fans in this manner, and considering his popularity, it’ll probably bring in a nice chunk of change too. The idea seems like such a no-brainer that I’m surprised well-known animation artists (people who actually draw for a living) haven’t tried doing this before. The Internet has broken down the barriers between creators and their fans, and the most successful artists in this day and age will ultimately be those who understand how to build an audience and connect with them in a meaningful way.

Alan Coats, the son of legendary Disney background painter Claude Coats, has started a website about his father’s work at ClaudeCoats.com Right now, the site is mainly a storefront that sells giclée prints of Coats’ personal paintings, some of which are quite attractive. I hope Alan eventually fleshes it out with more family photos, personal ephemera, and career details as well.

One of the unexpected delights of the Internet age has been seeing the children of Golden Age animators launch websites devoted to their parents. After toiling in anonymity for their entire careers, it’s fitting that these artists would finally receive marquee recognition with entire destinations devoted to their individual accomplishments. The gold standards for family-operated artist sites are AbeLevitow.com, BillPeet.net and this incredible blog by Irv Spector’s son.

(link via Disney History)