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Festival director Stacey Simmons thought last year’s 125 entries were a lot to handle, but for the upcoming 2007 festival, she received nearly twice as many from 30 countries. The number of films submitted from China alone surprised her. Only the top 10 or 15 will be screened this year. The Red Stick International Animation Festival also features retrospectives of Kung Fu Panda director Mark Osborne and the late Joe Barbera of Hanna-Barbera fame who died in December, as well as workshops that will give aspiring filmmakers the chance to pitch their projects to Hollywood pros.

All this from a festival that in 2006 seemed to have one nagging problem. “One thing people said was that there was too much to do,” Simmons says. “So we’re trying to break things up this year.”

Simmons promises the five-day festival will have a more natural flow that will make it easier for those people who want to see it all.

Scheduling issues aside, Red Stick has grown rapidly in its role as a market leader. This year Red Stick’s sister festival, Animex in Middlesbrough, U.K., incorporated some of Red Stick’s ideas into its older, more established event. Things like Red Stick’s Cartoon-a-palooza that draws kids and adults alike to the Shaw Center the Saturday morning of the festival to watch cartoons and eat breakfast dressed in their coziest pajamas. Just like Saturdays growing up, only with more face painting and spacewalks.

Workshops with The Incredibles animator Robert Russ and Richard “Levelord” Gray—the designer who practically invented the levels system for video games like Doom—and a kick-off Cartoons in the Grass party on the lawn of the Old State Capitol are just a few highlights of this year’s festival. But above all, Simmons wants Red Stick to continue to fertilize Louisiana’s indigenous talent. Maybe a bright, young kid at this year’s festival will become the next Joe Barbera.

“Film is an intellectual property business,” Simmons muses. “And the only way to keep the money in Louisiana is to keep the intellectual property in Louisiana. And we can do that by fostering the film industry in the state.”

The Red Stick International Animation Festival is April 18-22 at the Shaw Center for the Arts, Manship Theatre, Louisiana Arts & Science Museum and the Old State Capitol. For passes and an updated schedule of events, visit redstickfestival.org.