Announcement from the Ottawa International Animation Festival:

Organizers of the Ottawa International Animation Festival have unveiled the lineup for the 2012 edition of the festival, along with poster art from Koji Yamamura, winner of the 2007 grand prize for his film A Country Doctor.

“Drawing a poster for Ottawa12 is a great honor for me,” Yamamura commented. “This image was made from an unused sketch from Muybridge's Strings. This sketch was the basis for the creation of the character Zeno, who is thinking about the infinite split of time.”

After last year's deeply "depressing," almost "funereal" festival, festival organizers are planning a more upbeat lineup for 2012. “In past years, our event has been criticized for being too avant-garde or too dark,” said Artistic Director Chris Robinson. “This year we wanted to provide some really fun and entertaining programming but don't worry, there’s sure to also be the usual array of delightfully bizarre and thought provoking work that many other members of our audience love.”

"This is not true," says Chris Robinson. "I did not say this. The films will be really dark, depressing, surreal and deal with humourish issues like death, ball cancer and heads. Take your fun and entertaining and stick figure it up your..."

"I'm sorry for this," interrupts Managing Director Kelly Neall. "Chris has not been well lately. The lobotomy takes time. This year's Festival will be super jolly frolicking fun with lots of gloriously awesome films about 'happy.'"

Clear your calendar from September 19th to the 23rd because coming to Ottawa this September are:

Ralph Bakshi, animation's "good ol' boy," whose films tackling sex, drugs, violence and racism surprised the family-friendly animation world in the '70s…

Barry Purves, a really, really, really pretty super duper pretty good British puppet animator and The Unconventional Ad Men: The Art of Smith & Foulkes, who make really fuggin knuckle crackingly great commercials for some of the world's most evil err... iconic... brands including Coca Cola, Honda and Motorola...

YouTubular: Animation in the Age of the Meme will examine how You Tube changed... my life. It changed the way I watch and it changed the way I create. It changed the way I give my kids tooth drugs. It'll also show off some of the strangest and most contagious viral videos to bless your computer screen.

We'll also be taking a look back; Make 'Em Laugh: Comedians and Animation will feature really funny cartoons featuring comedians, Cartoon Brew's much loved Amid Amidi will take us through the life and career of that train lovin', funny glasses wearing animator, Ward Kimball, and we'll also celebrate the life and films of the late, great American indie animator, Karen Aqua. Pretty good stuff, eh?