ASIFA-Hollywood has just announced that actor/director William Shatner will host the 37th Annual Annie Awards on Saturday, February 6, 2010, at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles, CA. Very Cool!

Tickets have gone on sale for the event at the Annie Award website. The evening begins with a pre-reception at 5 p.m. followed by the Annie Awards ceremony at 7 p.m. and post award party at 10 p.m. All events will be held at Royce Hall. The Annie Awards ceremony will also be webcast on annieawards.org beginning Tuesday, February 9, 2010.

One more plug. Cartoon Dump tonight (1/25) 8pm at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood with Frank Conniff (MST3K) and special stand-up comedy guest, Matt Braunger (Mad TV). Info: here. Tickets: here.

Yes, in case you were wondering, I’m still co-producing the monthly live comedy-bad cartoons-musical show Cartoon Dump. We are now on the fourth Monday of every month at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood. Different special comedy guests every month. More info here. Next show on Monday (1/25) - another plug to follow.

As award season continues, the British Academy Film Awards were announced today. Congratulations to Coraline (Henry Selick), Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson) and UP (Pete Docter) for the feature animation nominations. The animated short film nominations went to The Happy Duckling (Gili Dolev), Mother of Many (Sally Arthur, Emma Lazenby) and The Gruffalo (Michael Rose, Martin Pope, Jakob Schuh, Max Lang). The winners will be announced on Sunday February 21st.

Tomorrow night, ASIFA-East is hosting “A Spotlight on CGI and FX Studios.” Reps from five local studios—SpeakeasyFX, Hornet, NathanLove, Mechanism Digital and Framestore—will participate in a panel discussion about industry trends and the types of artists they’re looking to hire. It’s a positive sign to see a CG/VFX event being sponsored by ASIFA-East. These are big parts of the NY animation industry, and it’d be to everybody’s benefit if the organization incorporated them into the mix more frequently. The event begins at 7pm at the School of Visual Arts (209 E. 23rd Street, 3rd Floor Amphitheater). Admission is, magic word, FREE!

“Animation is not just for kids. It is also for adults who take drugs.”

And there you go. That’s how Hollywood perceives us. Paul McCartney delivered that line (and yes I know it was a joke) - and referenced Rock Band and the forthcoming Zemeckis travesty of Yellow Submarine - in his introduction to the Best Animated Feature presentation at tonight’s Golden Globes.

As one of the “adults” who loves animation, I want to congratulate our friend Pete Docter and the whole team at Pixar for winning the animation prize for UP.

UPDATE: Here’s the video of Pete’s acceptance speech:

Character designer and story artist David Colman (who is also the author of The Art of Animal Character Design) will be holding a weekend animal drawing workshop on January 30-31st. The LA-area classes take place at the Page Museum and Los Angeles Zoo between 10am-4pm each day. The class description:

Learn anatomy, gesture, and construction. Gain the tools needed to become proficient at the art of animal drawing, especially how to study from life. The class will consist of numerous handouts, accompanied with demonstrations and 1-on-1 instruction. First day is a six-hour course spent studying bones and skeletal structure @ the La Brea Tarpits in which you will learn the basic inner structure of quadrupeds. David will be doing a one hour demo study of one of the skeletons. The second day will be six hours spent @ the LA Zoo in which you will be studying about five different animals throughout the day.

The two-day workshop is $200, but Cartoon Brew readers who mention our site when signing up will receive $25 off. You can register either by email — dcolman27 (at) hotmail (dot) com — or by phone (818-512-6255). Cash, check or charge accepted. Students will be responsible for admission to the Page Museum and LA Zoo.

Following the disheartening Tintin story posted below, it seems appropriate to note that today, January 12, marks the first ever World’s Fair Use Day. The event is taking place in Washington, DC, and they’re showing live webcasts of all the panels. The event is organized by the DC non-profit Public Knowledge whose mission statement is “to ensure that communications and intellectual property policies encourage creativity, further free expression and discourse and provide universal access to knowledge.” Speakers at the event include a number of animators and cartoonists like Nina Paley of Sita Sings the Blues fame, Dan Walsh (Garfield Minus Garfield) and Machinima artist Chris Burke. The event’s keynote will be delivered by Pennsylvania congressman Mike Doyle, who will discuss the important of fair use in the digital age. The webcast starts in a few minutes so head on over to WorldsFairUseDay.org.