Glitch Productions - Sydney

One of the first days of Annecy I stumbled into a Youtube creators panel. This was a first come, first seated event, so people were lining up hours before. The person I was most excited to hear from was Kevin Lerdwichagul, CEO of Glitch Productions, an independent Sydney based animation studio. Starting out on Youtube in his bedroom, Kevin and his brother Luke have grown their business into a multi-million dollar company. Differing from traditional funding models, their young-adult animated series are completely self funded. 

During the panel Kevin reflected on the recent theatrical release of the last three episodes of the series ‘The Amazing Digital Circus.’ Following a group of people trapped inside a digital circus world with a rogue AI, the animated series pulls in hundreds of millions of views on Youtube. Kevin gushed about the fans causing such a stir the finale ended up playing in over two thousand theatres in the US alone. I went to one of the sold-out Brisbane screenings where people cosplayed as the characters and sung along to the songs. For an independent animated show with Youtube as its primary distribution platform, the response was unheard of.

The cartoons you grew up watching and loved as a kid, things like ‘Avatar the Last Airbender’ or ‘The Simpsons’ were all funded by American companies who could make their money back through advertising and merchandise. In some ways, Glitch is doing a very similar thing: selling merchandise and making revenue off Youtube ads. But what sets Glitch apart from those earlier studios is how they've cut out the middleman entirely. The money now goes directly from fans to the studio, so as a fan, you're directly financing your favourite show.

Animation, as it turns out, is an international sport, with most big productions these days needing to find funding in many different places. Co-production funding was a big buzz word floating around at Annecy. It’s normal, as it turns out, to get scripts written in Canada with a little bit of funding, have a show animated in Australia, and then post-production run out of New Zealand. I’m not entirely sure what this means for the types of stories we will tell in the future and who has the manpower to wrangle all these different funders together to make it happen. But I hope the internet can bridge this strange international gap between getting a film made or not.

Regardless, meeting some of the Kiri and Lou crew reminded me how small the world really is. It’s amazing that people can come together from all over the world to make a movie.

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Roadkill Rockband - Wellington

One of the many lovely things to come out of Annecy was meeting the group of young Kiwi animators brought over by Screen Wellington. As part of the Wellington Animation Film Festival, a few animators were selected to be part of the New Zealand delegation. One of them was the amazing Magda Wojciechowska or Rainbow Goldist on social media.

During the festival, Magda pitched their animated TV series 'Road Kill Rockband' to different producers and directors, using a book complete with beautiful art from their show. It was inspiring seeing them just go up to people and share their work. One of the best things about the festival and maybe animation in general, is there aren’t as many egos or social rules. People are excited to hear about new ideas. ‘Road Kill Rockband’ is a shortform Youtube series about a group of animals considered ‘road kill’ by society, sharing their love for music as a band. I have stayed in touch with Magda since coming back from France and was stoked to hear they received development funding from New Zealand on Air. This is part of an effort by New Zealand on Air to fund series for youth, made by youth.

Another big takeaway from the festival about getting things funded and made, was having a fully realised proof of concept. The formal pitches for feature film, TV series and student films all had fully animated scenes or trailers, giving the audience a taste of exactly what it will look like. ‘Road Kill Rockband’ was no exception to this rule. Before they applied for funding, Magda had already animated scenes from the pilot, testing character designs, voice actors and gaining an audience online. The short clips on TikTok have tens of thousands of views. Having that viewership or proof of an audience is becoming more and more a prerequisite to getting projects funded.