If you haven\u2019t been to a Spike and Mike Festival of Animation, now\u2019s the time. After all, the cult classic has been around for three decades now. “This is just going to be an absolutely special, stellar, impeccable show. We put countless time and effort into securing the absolute best films from all over the world \u2014 bar none,” said Craig “Spike” Decker of the festival\u2019s 30th anniversary, running Feb. 9 through March 30 at Sherwood Auditorium in the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla. “We\u2019re really proud of what we put together. I\u2019d but a ticket to this thing myself.” The festival had humble beginnings. Along with Decker\u2019s Sick and Twisted shows, which draw thousands annually, it began in Riverside as the “garage band of animation.” “We used to do these little carnivals in the backyard and promote them, and then we got into promoting a band and doing midnight animation films opening with classics like \u2018Max Fleisher,\u2019 \u2018Betty Boop,\u2019 \u2018Superman\u2019 and \u2018Popeye\u2019 cartoons,” Decker said. “Then we put together a show with all shorts at Riverside City College that just kept evolving.” The early animation shows, he said, were frantic, “straight out of \u2018Animal House\u2019 \u2014 really crazy stuff.” The secret, he and business partner Mike soon discovered, was that animation shorts “could have a cool, adult application.” “So we had to produce a lot of the films, which we did because nobody was making them except for a small group of animators in Vancouver, Canada,” Decker said. When he found the perfect venue to showcase the animation festival \u2014 La Jolla\u2019s Museum of Contemporary Art \u2014 he “escaped” to San Diego. The festival moved to MCASD in 1986 and remains there 30 years later, still drawing masses of fans and acting as a breeding ground for top names in film animation, from Wallace and Grommit to Tim Burton\u2019s first film, “Vincent.” For those who have a love for and knowledge of animation, the festival will provide an added element, said festival production manager Joseph Liebhardt. “In a way, it\u2019s almost a history retrospective of animation, going all the way back to \u2018Bambi Meets Godzilla\u2019 in 1969 to \u2018Pixels\u2019 (2011),” he said. So if, 20 years from now, the Festival of Animation is celebrating its 50th anniversary, just how does Decker think the future of animation will look? “They (animation shorts) will be in people\u2019s teeth,” he said, half-jokingly. “You\u2019ll watch it on people\u2019s foreheads, or the palms of their hands.” Regardless of technical improvements, Decker concluded, good animation will always be about good storytelling. “If you tell a good story with pen and ink, or with a computer, people will enjoy it,” he said.For more information about Spike & Mike\u2019s Festival of Animation, call (858) 459-8707 or visit www.spikeandmike.com. Among the festival\u2019s highlights:<\/b> A collection of the most award-winning and popular shorts in Spike and Mike\u2019s 30-year history, including more than 10 Academy Award winners or nominees and international films from France, Germany, Holland and Italy. David Silverman, director and producer of “The Simpsons” and “The Simpsons Movie” and a 2013 Oscar nominee in the Best Short Animation category, will be attending and signing autographs Feb. 9-10.\u00a0 Rich Moore, 2013 Oscar-nominated director of the Walt Disney Animation Studios blockbuster “Wreck-it Ralph,” will be attending and signing autographs March 1-2.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you haven\u2019t been to a Spike and Mike Festival of Animation, now\u2019s the time. After all, the cult classic has been around for three decades now. “This is just going to be an absolutely special, stellar, impeccable show. We put countless time and effort into securing the absolute best films from all over the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":270211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Spike and Mike fest fetes the big 3-0","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}