Well, imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch Saturday’s installment of Random Cartoons (10:30am/1:30pm on Nicktoons Network) and up popped my own cartoon Hornswiggle. Had I known it was going to run this weekend, I would have let you all know.

I was very disappointed I couldn’t give Brew readers advance notice. The good news is that someone posted the broadcast on YouTube - not quite the way I wanted you to see it, but it’ll have to do. Enjoy!

The wacky folks at NEO f/x took the soundtrack from this trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie and combined it with images from Filmation’s animated Star Trek. The result:

(via Trekmovie.com)

There are bad animation ideas, and then there are ideas so utterly imbecilic that make you wish you had never become interested in cartoons in the first place. This one is of the latter variety. Jstache is a series idea featuring Eighties rocker John Oates of Hall & Oates and, get ready, his crime-fighting mustache, voiced by stand-up comic Dave Attell. According to Billboard, the idea was concocted by Evan Duby, the creative director of Primary Wave Music Publishing, which owns the Hall & Oates music catalog. A Jstache pilot was recently produced by NY-based Curious Pictures. Here’s the setup for the pilot:

It will portray Oates opening a new wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that focuses on mustachioed musicians. Suddenly, a dying David Crosby appears and with his last breath warns Oates of a mysterious secret group of mustache wearers bent on killing other mustache wearers. As actor Tom Selleck attempts to escape from the latest murder scene, Oates summons his own mustache with a fist pump that simultaneously changes his clothes from conservative attire to pink pants and white boots.

Perhaps what’s most depressing is the last line of the Billboard article: “As one network executive who has seen the trailer says, ‘These guys are approaching the publishing business from a new angle. They’re taking rich copyrights and doing something innovative with them.’” Anybody who is familiar with animation knows that this type of innovation is nothing new within the art form. Producers, execs and all manner of creatively-clueless people have been ‘innovating’ since the earliest days of this art form. Thankully these people rarely last long in the business. Then again, sometimes they’re voted the smartest person in television too.

Starting today, the Nicktoons Network presents Frederator Studios’ Random! Cartoons each Saturday and Sunday at 10:30am Pacific time /1:30pm Eastern time. This week, Saturday (12/6) Episode 101 (Doug TenNapel’s Solomon Fix, Kyle Carrozza’s MooBeard, Nikki Yang’s Two Witch Sisters) and on Sunday (12/7), Episode 102 (Jeff DeGrandis’ Finster and Finster, Pen Ward’s Adventure Time, and Anne Walker’s Mind the Kitty).

I’ve been informed that my Random cartoon, Hornswiggle, may be delayed from its originally scheduled December 20th slot and is being held for a “possible stunt” next Spring. As usual, I’ll keep you posted. You’ll know when I know.

Studio aka has completed a 25-minute film adaptation of the children’s book Lost and Found. The film, directed by Philip Hunt, will debut on the UK’s Channel Four on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. It’s about the friendship that develops between a boy and a lost penguin who shows up at his doorstep. The film is narrated by Jim Broadbent and scored by composer Max Richter (Waltz With Bashir). Sounds like a charming film and looks promising too.

More exclusive images from the film after the jump…

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Cracking good news! Wallace and Gromit, who haven’t starred in anything significant since the 2005 feature The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, are returning to action in a new half-hour short entitled A Matter of Loaf and Death. The video above offers the first footage from the new short that has appeared online. Loaf and Death will debut on TV in Australia on December 3. UK TV premiere should also be this month with other countries to follow in 2009. A description of the new production:

The new film reunites Park with writer Bob Baker who co-wrote both The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. Sally Lindsay (Coronation Street) will be the voice of Piella Bakewell, alongside Peter Sallis who voices Wallace. In this new masterpiece viewers will catch up with Wallace and Gromit who have opened a new bakery – Top Bun – and business is booming, not least because a deadly Cereal Killer is targeting all the bakers in town so competition is drying up. Gromit is worried that they may be the next victims but Wallace couldn’t care – he’s fallen head over heels in love with Piella Bakewell, former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials. So Gromit is left to run things on his own when he’d much rather be getting better acquainted with Piella’s lovely pet poodle Fluffles.

(Thanks, Matt Jones)

Another one bites the dust.

Variety reported yesterday that the Fox broadcast network will abandon running cartoons on Saturday morning - and will replace the programming block with infomercials.

Saturday Morning broadcast television lost its allure as a kids destination since the advent of multiple 24 hour-a-day kids cable networks (Nick, Disney, CN), home video (DVD) and the internet, so this is no surprise. And besides, was anyone watching the crap 4KidsTV programmed on that channel? 4Kids was paying Fox $20 million dollars a year to foist things like Kirby: Right Back At Ya! on unsuspecting toddlers.

Fox is actually only replacing two hours (of the four hour block) with infomercials. The other two hours are being returned to local stations. Some of those may run news or sitcom reruns in that slot. If we’re lucky, perhaps some clever independent Fox affiliates will pick up some syndicated animation programming - or better yet, something like the Warner Bros. cartoons. Currently the classic Looney Tunes shorts are homeless (they were dropped by Cartoon Network two years ago) and Warners is actively seeking a new place for them on the tube.

Will Warners syndication execs and local Fox TV programmers see a golden opportunity here? Not likely, but we can always hope.

Here are eight station IDs for the late great Locomotion channel (1996-2005), a wonderfully programmed Latin American cartoon cable station which was bought out in 2005 by Animax. In it’s heyday, the channel mixed classic Hollywood cartoons, anime and independent animation. Good stuff.

I don’t know who did these spots, but they are bursting with creativity and a lot of fun. They had one, which I haven’t seen in ten years, featuring Krazy Kat and Ignatz Herriman style, as stop motion puppets. Does anyone have that, or know who did it?