Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1257506
D E PA R T M E N T 31 KEYFRAME SUMMER 2020 31 "...everybody wants content, and that's where shorts can be very beneficial and why they are coming more to the forefront" – ANDREW EREKSON sticking to the traditional 2- to 3-minute format, those submitting were encouraged to aim for 5 to 7 minutes; several hundred pitches came over the transom. "We're looking for what Nickelodeon's brand has always been: character, comedy, and heart," says Kim, who's been on both sides of the pitching table and oversees shorts development. "It's been a great lab to cultivate new artists. We're looking for all different kinds of creators." The breadth of opportunities is a boon for short-form storytellers, which increases competition among the studios to recruit them. Still, the upshot to all the streaming options, and the many ways viewers experience content, is that the door to animated shorts is now open wider for a greater variety of concepts and voices. INCUBATING INNOVATION Feature films may draw an outsized amount of attention for the magnitude of their spectacle, but often the most innovative work in the industry is being done on a much smaller scale. From its earliest days Disney used animated shorts to incubate innovation, and its Short Circuit program, launched in 2016, is explicitly designed to encourage technical and stylistic experimentation. To invite a greater diversity of voices, the program accepts blind pitches from any studio employee—so far, post-production coordinators, technical directors, visual effects animators, lighters, story artists, and production assistants are among those who have submitted ideas. The first half-dozen 2- to 3-minute shorts were originally intended only for internal exposure, but ultimately the studio was impressed enough with the results to release all 14 completed short films on Disney+ in January. "The goal is to take risks in both visual style and visual storytelling, to surface new voices within the studio, and to test new technologies," says Walt