Rise of Indie Animation

When imagining Indie Animation, a YouTube channel where an artist posts their short 1-2 minute animated shorts or longer fan animations comes to mind. However, some recent indie animations have risen above these archetypes to become 20+ minute-long animated stories or even part of a series of episodes. Others, such as Spindlehorse and GLITCH Productions, have become more established with many animators, animated shows, and multiple show deals with popular streaming services such as Netflix. In this article, I will be primarily discussing these larger animation studios that have been gaining mass popularity in recent years.

Unlike large studios such as The Walt Disney Company, smaller indie animation studios have to deal with the issue of funding. Often, animators have to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours just to animate one single episode of a show. Indie animation studios can make limited money from YouTube ad revenue, but their largest sources of revenue are show deals with streaming services and merchandise sales. However, to actually make these deals with streaming companies and have high demand for their merch, these studios need a large fanbase. So, how exactly did these indie shows gain so much popularity?

One of the most distinct aspects of indie animation is the creative control animators have. Large corporations such as Disney exercise extensive corporate oversight of artists to build their brand. In contrast, in new indie studios, artists can take more creative liberties, leading to unique stories that do not necessarily fall into established formulas. For example, the dark comedy and psychological horror series The Amazing Digital Circus stands out for its individuality. GLITCH Productions gave virtually full creative freedom to the animator, Cooper Smith Goodwin (a.k.a. Gooseworx), to tell their story exactly how they wanted to, evident in the series’ unusual storytelling and nonlinear plot.

Furthermore, indie animation is unbound in its sanitization, unlike Disney. Disney and most animation studios’ brands target young children, with subscription to their shows falling off as children become teens and young adults. Indie Animation capitalizes on this by providing shows that target the age range from teens to young adults, demonstrating that animation is not limited to children's programming and can tell deeper, more mature stories. Both GLITCH Productions and Spindlehorse produce TV-14 and TV-MA shows and attract many viewers due to the size of their target audiences.

With these studios growing in size so rapidly, it may well be that within the next few years, Indie studios such as GLITCH will join the ranks of animation legends such as Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks.