A Cartoon Banquet for Lovers of Animation : Festival: The biennial L.A. Animation Celebration, a weeklong international smorgasbord of classic and cutting-edge cartoons, starts tonight.

The man with the award-winning “Golden Buns” is getting ready to defend his title. Two years ago, armed with nothing more than a couple of pieces of foam padding and a lifelong passion for cartoon characters, Los Angeles resident Edwin Austin, 33, sat through every single animated film during the Third Los Angeles International Animation Celebration; 650 films, to be exact.

“I just happen to enjoy animation,” said Austin. As the winner of the Golden Buns Award, the unassuming car stereo installer was first in line to buy another all-inclusive ticket to the biennial, weeklong international smorgasbord of classic and cutting-edge animation. Starting tonight, Austin plans to take in as many of the 237 films entered in competition as his celebrated posterior will allow.

That’s in addition to the 35 films being showcased, including world, American or Los Angeles premieres of 11 new full-length animated features, sneak peeks at the latest projects for prime-time and experimental television and a visual trip through the Warner Bros. vault to recover “lost” cartoon treasures.

Austin might seem atypical until you meet some of the other faces behind the festival. These are not your average film buffs. On the contrary, some of them proudly admit to being cartoon “cultists.”

“I think there are a lot of closet cartoon fanatics out there,” said Jerry Beck, 36, an animation historian who has spent 15 years chronicling American cartoons and has written, among other books, “Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies: An Illustrated Guide to Warner Bros. Cartoons.”

Saturday night, Beck will serve as tour guide to the “lost” Warner Bros. cartoons. Actually, according to Beck, the cartoons--either having outlived their usefulness or having become potential studio liabilities--weren’t so much lost as they were intentionally shelved.

They include rare works commissioned by the government as recruitment films during World War II. Positioned at that time as movie trailers, the animated shorts feature characters such as Bugs Bunny selling war bonds and an eager, can-do young soldier, Willie N. List, learning what to expect of Army life.

These cartoons also include Warner’s 1942-45 animated series, “Private Snafu,” which was shown on military bases here and abroad as a how-to guide for soldiers trying to stay alive. The cartoons reflect wartime social mores by featuring pin-ups in the soldiers’ lockers and--unheard of in an art form that at that time catered almost exclusively to children--rough language.

“Even die-hard Warner Bros. fans have never seen these,” Beck said.

But the most intriguing of the “lost” cartoons may be the wartime works eventually pulled from circulation and banned by the studio because of racial stereotyping. “We’re not showing them to offend anybody,” said Beck, “but to place them within the history of animation. They would never be on television today.”

For Beck, these rare clips are valuable not only for their unusual content, but for their record of fine artistry. “The studio didn’t cut any corners on these,” Beck said. “They used their top talent.”

Which is exactly what the festival--as the only international animation festival in America--hopes to attract. “What we’ve learned is that we have to focus on what the studios, the animation companies and the animators here in Los Angeles really need from a film festival,” said Terry Thoren, 39, president of Expanded Entertainment, the animation promotion and distribution company underwriting the event.

This year, that meant using a pre-selection jury of notable animators to whittle down a staggering number of films (879 from 36 countries) to about 200 films facing off in 11 different categories. It also meant scaling back from university-based seminars, two theaters and continuous adjacent circus tent parties to one theater--the Nuart in West L.A.--and a closing-night awards ceremony that includes screenings of the prize-winning entries.

What’s at stake for the contestants is more than $140,000 in prizes, including cash awards, scholarships, animation-capable computer workstations and commissions to develop prize-winning storyboards into finished animation projects.

Perhaps more importantly, the competition offers beginning animators a potentially career-changing public forum and a chance to have their works evaluated by some of the best in the business. The creator of “The Simpsons,” Matt Groening, will present the $2,000 grand prize. And John Coates, a producer for the United Kingdom’s renowned TVC Studios, will be on hand to discuss studio classics such as “The Yellow Submarine” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

Beyond the competition, festival organizers hope to give studio regulars and the public an imagination-sparking glimpse of the latest in alternative animation. The new horizons include advances in both design and concept, including computer-assisted animation, claymation, model and puppet animation and the so-called “underground” animation as conceived for MTV’s weekly animated variety series, “Liquid Television.”

“Animation in this country has been very compartmentalized--I would even say ghetto-ized”--on Saturday mornings,” Thoren said. “Our vision when we started the festival in 1985 was to change people’s perception of animation as not just being cartoons for children. There are between 1,000 to 2,000 pieces of legitimate animation art made every year--all over the world--that say more than Saturday morning.”

Thoren is particularly enthused about one of the festival’s full-length features, “The Tune,” created by perennial festival favorite (and 1987 Oscar nominee) Bill Plympton. “Everybody loves to see his films,” Thoren said, “because no one can believe that this guy--with the help of just two other people--produces such good animation out of his apartment in New York.”

This year’s festival--unlike the money-losing efforts of the past--may finally catch the tail wind of the extraordinary new worldwide interest in animation. When the festival began six years ago, studio regulars were still reminiscing about animation’s golden age in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

There is wide agreement that animation--in terms of quality as well as quantity--has entered its second golden age. In 1988, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” exploded on the big screen and “The Simpsons” captured the small screen a year later. Then 10.5 million video cassettes of “Bambi” flew out of the stores and pop stars such as Paula Abdul (“Opposites Attract”) and Rod Stewart (“The Motown Song”) gave animation an added, modern-day jolt of intense glamour.

And the second golden age means golden opportunities for animators. According to Thoren: “What you’ll be seeing at the festival are the farm teams for the world’s best--the ones who’ll end up creating the next Walt Disney classics and shows like “The Simpsons.”