Coming to Downtown Los Angles, October 10, the wildly eclectic celebration of animation features 50 original shorts from a worldwide line up of unfettered artists; tickets are now on sale.
Nouns Fest 2024 will showcase 50 new animated shorts live at the United Theater in Downtown Los Angeles on October 10. Digital arts collective Nouns created a $1 million grant pool, artists worldwide to create the wildly eclectic celebration of animation slated for presentation at the event. Films range from 30 seconds to five minutes in length… and creators had creative freedom to do whatever they wanted.
Tickets are still available here and include access to the full screening and the Nouns Fest after party.
In addition to the showcased animation, award-winning animators at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, home of Robot Chicken, will debut three all-new animated shorts created especially for the event.
“What you’ll see at Nouns Fest is creativity unleashed, pure and simple,” said Stoopid Buddy co-founder Eric Towner, who is also a co-founder of Nouns Fest. “In a time of massive change and turmoil for the animation industry, our goal was to finance, encourage and support true creative freedom, and the results we’ve seen so far have smashed through our sky-high expectations. We can’t wait to see these incredible works on the big screen.”
Nouns Fest received over 400 entries from independent animation creators worldwide. After reviewing all creative submissions, the Nouns Fest judging team selected 50 animators to receive grants ranging from $7,500 to $25,000, for use funding production of their short films.
Creators received only one direction: to incorporate at least one of the “Nouns” — digital characters generated by Nouns and auctioned off daily at Nouns.wtf. Artists made all other creative decisions themselves. The results, organizers promise, are “wild, unpredictable, and definitely not fit for all ages.”
“We told everyone involved to take off all of the safety rails and show us what was in their deepest creative minds, and that’s exactly what they’ve done,” said Nouns Fest co-founder Walter J. Newman. “If there’s one common thread that runs through the ninety minutes of animation that will debut at Nouns Fest, it’s creative freedom—a spirit that will be felt in every aspect of the event itself.”
Towner, Newman, Playground Productions CPO Chris Waters, Nouns veteran Joel Cares, music executive Joshua Fisher, and award-winning animator and director Goldy co-founded Nouns Fest. They came together to form the digital art collective Nouns, one of the largest sources of funding for independent animated shorts.
Check out the “Nouns Fest 2024” teaser and remember “Don't Bring Your Kids!”
Artists featured in the program retain full rights to their work, content and characters in perpetuity, underscoring Nouns’ commitment to a free market of art and ideas.
Founded in 2021, Nouns is a global, community-run organization that uses the proceeds from the sale of digital collectibles to fund open-source technology, art, and public-works projects.
Nouns Fest is the next evolution of “Nouns Short Shorts,” an animation competition and festival that led to the production of 17 animated short films in 2023. In June 2023, Nouns Fest held its first festival at BrainDead Studios in L.A., featuring work from top independent animators in the world. Watch those shorts at Nounsfest.tv.
A list of featured films will be released shortly before the October 10 event.
Source: Nouns
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
