Independent animation

The term independent animation refers to animated shorts and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.

History[edit]

A good portion of the work is viewed in animation festivals and private screen rooms along with schools that produce animation through instruction. The significance of independent animation is as important as studio fare.

Early independent animation[edit]

One of the earliest feature-length animated films was The Adventures of Prince Achmed, made in 1926 by Lotte Reiniger, a German artist who made silhouette animation using intricate cut-out figures and back-lighting. She made another feature, Dr. Dolittle, in 1928.^[1]

United States[edit]

In America, working independent animators included Mary Ellen Bute, John Whitney, Harry Everett Smith^[2] and Oskar Fischinger alongside earlier efforts of what would become UPA.^[3]

In 1959, the first independent animated film to win an Oscar with John Hubley's Moonbird which was also produced by wife and collaborator Faith Hubley using limited animation to tell their own personal stories.^[4]

Jordan Belson,^[3] Robert Breer^[5] and Stan Vanderbeek made experimental animation during this time.^[4]

Ralph Bakshi tried to establish an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions in the 1970s.

In the late 1960s, animator Ralph Bakshi and producer Steve Krantz founded Bakshi Productions,^[6] establishing the studio as an alternative to mainstream animation by producing animation his own way and accelerating the advancement of female and minority animators. He also paid his employees a higher salary than any other studio at that time.^[7] In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca-Cola and Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse, a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica.^[8]^[9] However, Bakshi was uninterested in the kind of animation he was producing, and wanted to produce something personal. Bakshi soon developed Heavy Traffic, a tale of inner-city street life. However, Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund the film because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience.^[9] While browsing the East Side Book Store on St. Mark's Place, Bakshi came across a copy of R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat. Impressed by Crumb's sharp satire, Bakshi purchased the book and suggested to Krantz that it would work as a film.^[9]

Fritz the Cat (1972) was the first animated film to receive an X rating from the MPAA, and the highest grossing independent animated film of all time.^[9] Bakshi then simultaneously directed a number of animated films, starting with Heavy Traffic a year later. Ralph Bakshi became the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films released back-to-back.^[10]

Alongside Bakshi came other independent animated features of this era (some made by former Disney animators) such as John David Wilson's Shinbone Alley (1971), Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH (1982) and Jerry Rees's cult classic The Brave Little Toaster (1987).^[11]^[12]

Avant-garde animator Carmen D'Avino's Oscar-nominated Pianissimo (1963) was distributed by none other than Amos Vogel's legendary Cinema 16.^[13]

Other independent animators during this time included Charles Braverman,^[3] Gene Deitch,^[3] Marv Newland, Fred Mogubgub,^[14] Fred Wolf and Will Vinton.^[15] The latter two would go on to win Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film along with the works of the Hubleys and Ernest Pintoff starting in the late 1950s-early 1960s.

Notable award-winning films included Dale Case and Bob Mitchell's The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam (1970), Ted Petok's The Crunch Bird (1971),^[16] Frank Mouris's Frank Film (1973)^[17] and Jimmy Picker's Sundae in New York (1983).^[18]

Animation historians John Canemaker^[19] and Michael Sporn^[20] also made independent animation in New York, both earning Oscar nods for their work (only Canemaker won in 2005).

Other animators like Candy Kugel,^[21] Jeff Scher,^[22] Joanna Priestley, Kathy Rose, Suzan Pitt, Robert Swarthe, Vince Collins, Barrie Nelson, Eli Noyes, Sky David (aka Dennis Pies), Steve Segal, Mike Jittlov, Paul Fierlinger,^[23] Adam Beckett, Lillian Schwartz, Larry Cuba and George Griffin also made experimental and personal animation during the mid- to late 1970s through the early- to mid-1980s.^[3]^[24]

In the 1970s, independent animators like Sally Cruikshank continued to explore independent and D.I.Y. distribution options, but were still largely met with rejection even though their work is now considered ground breaking.^[25]

Collections of independent films have been gathered for theatrical viewing, and video release, under such titles as the International Tournee of Animation (which existed between about 1965^[26] and the late 1990s), Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation (1977 to 1990) and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation since 1990. Contemporary independent animators, including Steven Subotnick, Bill Plympton,^[27] Don Hertzfeldt, Nina Paley^[27] and PES have also made work outside of the studio system.

Later independent animation[edit]

The rise of the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s saw an exponential increase in the production of independent animation which included personal independent works by Timothy Hittle,^[28] Janie Geiser, John R. Dilworth, Lewis Klahr^[29]^[30] and John Schnall.^[31] Personal computer power increased to the point where it was possible for a single person to produce an animated cartoon on a home computer, using software such as Flash, and distribute these short films over the World Wide Web. Independently produced Internet cartoons flourished as the popularity of the Web grew, and a number of strange, often hilarious short cartoons were produced for the Web.

In the late 1990s, an independent animated short film called The Spirit of Christmas was produced for under $2,000 by two artists, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. This film was widely distributed on the Internet as a pirated cartoon, and its phenomenal popularity gave rise to the popular television animated series South Park.^[32] Limited 1990s bandwidth made streaming difficult, if not impossible. While some animators like Spümcø's John K. opted to use Flash, it still required a plug-in making it unviewable in many early web browsers. Other early online animators like M. Wartella opted to use the Animated GIF to overcome these limitations and create early web-based animation viewable through all browsers.^[33]

Continued success for independent animation occurred in the 2000s with animated shorts such as Making Fiends. Both shorts garnered enough support to be turned into full-length TV series, airing on Nicktoons Network and Big TV, respectively.

By the mid-to-late 2000s YouTube and the Internet and like-minded online video distribution, in addition to independent broadcasting sites that followed, proved to be a dominant form of independently distributed, broadcast, edited, and produced animation TV shows, anime, feature films, music videos, retro animation, commercials, trailers, original online animation content, and web exclusives^[34] (which would otherwise not stand a chance of seeing airtime on more normal and expensive forms of mainstream broadcasting on most television networks, which still continue to function on a more traditional distribution matrix). The Annoying Orange, which started off as a series of viral quasi-CGI animated comedy shorts on YouTube, quickly gained a cult following and an excess of 100 million views online. It is an example of an animated web series to transition between Internet and television distribution successfully, as an animated series on Cartoon Network.^[32]

Recent independent animations released on YouTube include the adult animated web series Helluva Boss, and pilots for Hazbin Hotel and Long Gone Gulch. While Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel are made by independent animator Vivienne Medrano,^[35]^[36] Long Gone Gulch was written and produced by Tara Billinger and Zach Bellissimo, who had worked on animations for Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Disney+.^[37] At the same time, the all-ages web series, Sherwood, also released all 12 episodes on YouTube Originals, made freely available in April 2020.^[38]

Alternative comics artist turned animator Dash Shaw's Cryptozoo (2021) enjoyed critical success at the Sundance Film Festival to the point of winning the NEXT Innovator Award while it was also nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards a year afterwards.^[39]^[40]^[41]