Throughout this weekend’s Toronto Animation Business Convention, Invincible firm Skybound Entertainment revealed it’s acquired the rights to Spike & Mike’s Pageant of Animation.
Older followers might keep in mind the occasion—named after Craig “Spike” Decker and the late Mike Gribble—as a showcase for animated shorts outlined as “innovative, daring, and sometimes hilarious.” Beginning with the 1977 Pageant of Animation and increasing with the respective Sick & Twisted and New Gen festivals of the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, they featured works by those that would finally develop into identified names in animation at present—Pete Docter (Soul), Matt Stone & Trey Parker (South Park), and Mike Decide (King of the Hill), to call just a few. For many who weren’t alive (or conscious of) Spike & Mike’s again then, the closest equal can be the anthology collection What a Cartoon! from Cartoon Network (or Oh Yeah! Cartoons from Nickelodeon), each of which led to beloved 90s cartoons like Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Ladies, and My Life as a Teenage Robotic.
With a brand new revival of Spike & Mike’s underway, Skybound goals to focus on present and up-and-coming expertise within the animation house. Submitted shorts will likely be made out there digitally, and the corporate is engaged on securing improvement alternatives, venture stipends, and acquisitions as potential awards. At time of writing, submissions are open to the US, Canada, and the UK, and will be will be put into one in all three classes: the aforementioned Pageant of Animation (for common audiences) and Sick & Twisted (something “positively NSFW”), and the model new class of Arty Farty (mainly the animated equal of Oscar bait).
“I’m extremely appreciative of Skybound’s respect and understanding of what the Spike & Mike model has achieved,” wrote Decker, “and what we are able to proceed to supply. I’m excited to see what they’re capable of do for present Spike & Mike work and look ahead to creating a brand new chapter with them.”
“Spike & Mike has been a seminal platform for inventive voices in animation,” continued Skybound Leisure studio head Marge Dean. “There can be no place for reveals like Invincible to exist with out their efforts to develop a secure house for creators to precise each the uplifting and introspective or ‘sick and twisted’ in an extremely revolutionary, complicated, and boundless artwork type.”
The total listing of guidelines and necessities to undergo the brand new Spike & Mike’s pageant, together with a common FAQ, will be learn here.
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