First 2010 Quarter Winners: “The Lighthouse” by Velislava Gospodinova, from Sophia, Bulgaria, and “El Salón México” by Paul Glickman and Tamarind King are the two winners for the first quarter of 2010.

Second Quarter Shorts: Still time to submit independent animated shorts, for feedback from an international panel of animation experts, and to compete for a number of award possibilities. Deadline March 8.

Bronze Bozu Trophy: Larry Loc is designing a bronze trophy, the Bozu, for the 2010 Best of Festival winner, based on a caricature done at Walt Disney Studios back in the late 1930s.

$1,000 Funny Thing Contest: Bob Danziger has written a humorous book on energy independence, with a contest to find someone to design the cover. The winner will receive $1,000, and inside pages will receive $200 each. Deadline: March 8.

New Web Site: AniMazSpot has totally redesigned/upgrade their site and are open for comments.  Discover more about all these news items and more by visiting … www.animazspot.com

Our umbrella group, AniMazing Spotlight, had a very successful animated shorts festival in November 2009, but we’re not resting on our laurels.  The first Quarter for entering animated shorts is now closed, and the shorts are being reviewed by the international panel of animation experts, winners will be announced on the AniMazing Spotlight web site this week.  One of the submitted shorts is “El Salon de México” by Paul Glickman and Tamarind King (pictured to the right) … hmmm, can’t seem to get a picture up there today, so you’ll just have to see it on the AniMazing Spotlight home page post for this month.

The second Quarter is now open for entries, deadline is March 8th, but we advise submitting early to avoid the usual late comers rush, and getting up on the web site longer.  The site has been recently updated with the latest shorts, new international panel, and the festival page has a full review of the 2009 festival activities.

Visit our AniMazing Spotlight web site for more details at www.animazspot.com

The AniMazing Spotlight “Weekend of Animated Shorts” festival at the legendary Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood was a great success, and featured many of the animation interviews we’ve done for Toon In to the World of Animation over the years.

We had a short introduction film at the beginning of each program, with the AniMazing Spotlight logo designed by Toon In interviewee, Joe Sikoryak, animated by his brother, Steve Sikoriak.  And, Toon In interviewee, June Foray used a different one of her hundreds of voices for each one.  Her picture is on the right, and her interview is included in our series of podcasts.

Then after the Animated Logo, with June’s intro, we had a departed master give a short word of advise, taken from our interviews.

This was such a delight for our young audience, that we are considering doing an entire program of our Toon In video interviews for next year’s festival.  This year’s words of advise came Toon In luminaries, including; Jules Engel, pictured on the right, Derek Lamb, Bill Melendez, and Mel Leven, at his piano.

Then, after the master spoke there was a lovely little animation, created specifically for our festival, by Mike Kazaleh, pictured below, which introduced the live Festival Host, Mike Elliot.

The weekend included an Animation Marathon, which screened all the nominees, a Mixer to chat with animation greats, and an Awards ceremony, but, where many of our Toon In celebrities appeared, were as presenters of programs, which turned out to be the hits of the weekend.

Eric Goldberg did a stand-up version of his “Character Animation Crash Course” book, which was both hilarious and informative, Bob Kurtz showed some fabulous commercials, going back to the 50s in NYC, Bill Kroyer did an amazingly early overview of computers and animation, and detailed his work on the first Tron, Jim Capobianco did his program on the Importance of Story in animated shorts, using his Your Friend the Rat, and his new Leonardo, which had its Hollywood Premier at our festival, and finally Tom Sito presented a short history of shorts, finishing his examples with Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, which was it’s old ugly politically incorrect self, but with the preamble by Tom, I looked through all that at the absolutely fantastic squish and squash animation by Rod Scribner.

Oh, yes, if you want to enter a short animated film in the next festival, we are now Open for Entries for the First Quarter.  Deadline is December 28th, just a few weeks away.  To enter visit our AniMazing Spotlight web site at …

www.animazspot.com

… click the blue Quals (qualifications) balloon on the Home page, then scroll down to the bottom of the qualifications for the buttons to submit your short, fee, and application.

The “Toon In!” team has been working on the AniMazing Spotlight! “festival and feedback” project lately, so we thought we’d bring you up to date on the latest over there.  You can get more details by visiting us at www.animazspot.com.  

We find it interesting that the three winning shorts of the first two quarters are very different, at first glance, anyway; “Alice’s Attic” by Robyn Yannoukos, the first one to your right, the Q1 winner, announced last month, is a complex visual statement, “Jabbawaki” by Sean B. Conly, the second one down, one of the new Q2 winners is a graphically stunning legend, and finally “RED & blue” by Tyler Ayres, the last one down there, the other Q2 winner, is a more traditional light-hearted romp with animated characters.  

Robyn Yannoukos’ “Alice’s Attic” (image to the right) is the First Winner of AniMazing Spotlight’s first Quarterly competition.  Other shorts will still be chosen from panelists notes; for Specialty Awards and Honorable Mentions, but those will be finalized just prior to the year-end festival, and then screened during the Evening Program.  To find our more visit the new AniMazing Spotlight! site at …

www.animazspot.com

After months of tweaking and getting the “festival & feedback” program underway, the new site is now ready for visitors, and will leave it’s temporary home here, and Toon In! … to the World of Animation will return to the business of getting more animation interviews up on the site.  

So, to find out about the first AniMazing winner, and more, here are some of the things you’ll find on the new site …

• Complete lists of first entries in the 1st & 2nd Quarters
• Requirements for submitting animated shorts
• An Application to enter a short animation
• How to sign up for the Festival Crew
• More about the International Panel
• How to become a Sponsor
• What people are saying
• and, more …

The site is not finished, maybe 90%.

All the important information is in the site now.  Primarily, some pesky artifacts need to be dealt with, and, more information and functionality will be added.  Comments will be gratefully accepted using active Contact Us buttons on the site, which reminds me, we have to get back to fixing them here.