The terms independent animation or indie animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced, financed and created outside a major national animation industry.
United States In America, working independent animators included Mary Ellen Bute,Enchanted Drawings - Google Books (pgs.286-293) John Whitney, Harry Everett Smith100 Greatest Animated Shorts/Film #3: Interwoven / Harry Smith - Skwigly Animation MagazineRambler: Spoofing the Avant-Garde in Jane Conger Belson's Odds & Ends - Art & TrashReview: 'New York Animation 1966-1999: A City in Motion'|Animation World Network and Oskar Fischinger alongside earlier efforts of what would later become UPA.Animated cartoon sponsored by union played role in reelecting Roosevelt - California Labor Federation
In 1959, The Academy Awards witnessed 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.When Indie Animation Won Its First Oscar|Animation Obsessive
Jordan Belson, Robert BreerAnimation - Google Books (ch.4 "Independent Animators and the Artisanal Mode 1947-1989") and Stan Vanderbeek made groundbreaking experimental animation during this time.
Avant-garde animator Carmen D'Avino's Oscar-nominated Pianissimo (1963)FILMS FOR CHILDREN (1972 program) on MoMA.orgThe Films of Carmen D'Avino - Cartoon BrewTHE ACADEMY PRESENTS 'RESTORED ANIMATED RARITIES'|AFA: Animation for Adults was distributed by none other than Amos Vogel's legendary Cinema 16.
Other independent animators during this time included Jim Henson, Charles Braverman, Gene Deitch, Fred Mogubgub,This Is How Film Fundraising Worked Before Kickstarter|Cartoon Brew Fred Wolf50 Years Of Harry Nilsson's The Point - Aquarium Drunkard and Will Vinton.Will Vinton, Oscar winner and pioneering Portland animator, dies at 70 - oregonlive.com'Closed Mondays' by Bob Gardiner & Will Vinton (Classic Animation Frames)|Zippy Frames 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.'The Critic': Animation at Its Most Pretentious - Animation Obsessive
In the late 1960s, animator Ralph Bakshi and producer Steve Krantz founded Bakshi Productions, 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
Alongside Bakshi came other independent animated features of the 70s and 80s (some made by former Disney animators) such as John David Wilson's Shinbone Alley (1971), Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH (1982), Vinton's The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) and Jerry Rees's cult classic The Brave Little Toaster (1987).HOW THE SECRET OF NIMH PROVED DON BLUTH COULD BEAT DISNEY - Nerdist3 Reasons Why: The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)|Zippy FramesTHE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER (1987) (***)|Animation World NetworkDon Bluth Goes Independent - AWN.comOf Mice and Men: The Films of Don Bluth – Film Comment
Notable award-winning films also from the 70s and 80s included Dale Case and Bob Mitchell's The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam (1970), Ted Petok's The Crunch Bird (1971),The Dog Days of Summer, Detroit – and “The Crunch Bird” (1971)|Cartoon Research Frank Mouris's Frank Film (1973)New York State Writers Institute - Frank Film and Frankly Caroline and Jimmy Picker's Sundae in New York (1983).The Real Indies: A Close Look at Orphan Films|Oscars.org (title: "Visions of New York")
Animation historians John CanemakerDeclaration Of Independents Independent Animation is Alive and Well in New York by Melissa Chimovitz - AWN.com and Michael SpornAnimator Michael Sporn, an Oscar Nominee, Dies at 67 – Chicago Tribune also made independent animation in New York, both earning Oscar nods for their work (only Canemaker won in 2005).
Other animators like Candy Kugel,Buzzco - Candy Kugel Jeff Scher, Joanna Priestley, Kathy Rose, Suzan Pitt, Robert Swarthe, Vince Collins, Barrie Nelson, Eli Noyes, Sky David (aka Dennis Pies), Steve Segal, Mike Jittlov,Wizards: Labour, Magic and The Wizard of Speed and Time – Art & Trash Paul Fierlinger,CTW and MTV: Shorts of Influence - Animated World Network Len Lye, 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.Independent Frames: American Experimental Animation in the 1970s-1980s - Tate
In the 1970s, independent animator Sally Cruikshank (known for the 1975 cult short Quasi at the Quackadero alongside animated segments for Sesame StreetWhat 'Sesame Street' Did for Animation|Animation Obsessive) continued to explore independent and D.I.Y. distribution options, but were still largely met with rejection even though her work is now considered ground breaking.
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 and ended in 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,Light Cone - Steven SUBOTNICK Bill Plympton,Independent Animation episode 4 - Indie Animated FeaturesICONS OF ANIMATION - THE ART OF ILLUSTRATION|Oscars.org Don Hertzfeldt,Second Edition of the Skwigly book ‘Independent Animation’ out now - Skwigly Animation MagazineDon Hertzfeldt’s Complete Animation Collection Finds Streaming Home on Dropout – Animation Magazine Nina Paley and PES have also made work outside of the studio system.
Later independent animation
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, Janie Geiser,Keep it in Motion - Classic Animation Revisited: 'The Red Book'|Animation World Network John R. Dilworth,The Triumphant Independent|Animation World NetworkFirst Volume of Gotham Indie Sampler on DVD|Animation Magazine Lewis KlahrExperimental Animation Gems by Suzan Pitt, Walerian Borowczyk, and More - Hyperallergic and John Schnall.The Vague Rumor of Independence in New York Animation|Animation World Network 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. 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.
Independent animation in the 2000s included animated features such as Paley's Sita Sings the Blues, Christiane Cegavske's Blood Tea and Red String,BLOOD TEA AND STRING - Film Threat the CGI-animated features Hoodwinked! and BarnyardIndie Animation King Bill Plympton|Animation Magazine and Indiewood director Wes Anderson's first foray into animation territory: his 2009 stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox.Check out These Must-See Indie Animated Movies|The Mary SueOn the Borders: Children's Horror and Indiewood Animation|Contemporary Hollywood Animation: Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s|Oxford Academic (Pages 144–177)
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 (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). 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.
American animated indie features from the 2010s included two notable adult dramas: Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits (2013)Sullivan's 'Consuming Spirits' to Screen in L.A.|Animation Magazine and Charlie Kaufman's Academy-Award nominated Anomalisa (2015).
The Oregon-based stop-motion animation studio Laika is best known for their Oscar-nominated efforts such as Corpse Bride, Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings.Indie Film Box Office: 'Strange Darling', 'Between The Temples' & 'Coraline' - DeadlineScenes From Independent Film Week: Incentives, Acting, and Mixing At The IFP Market|IndieWire Wes Anderson would return to stop-motion animation with Isle of Dogs (2018).
Recent independent animations released on YouTube included the pilot for Lackadaisy Review: A purrfect storm of chaos in new indie animation Lackadaisy’ - The Tacoma Ledger and the all-ages web series, Sherwood, which also released all 12 episodes on YouTube Originals and were made freely available in April 2020.