Last month, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios hosted a festival of original animation, the Nouns Short Shorts Festival, in Los Angeles. Funded by avant-garde collective Nouns, the 17 comedic films comprising the first round of “Short Shorts” were selected for production in an interactive community event. More than 60 artists from around the world submitted their concepts, and the Nouns community themselves awarded funding to 10 projects through the open-source, Nouns-funded technology, Prop House.
We caught up with Chris Waters, head of development at Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, to find out more about this project:
Animation Magazine: Can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the project? When did it start and how long did it take to make?
Chris Waters: Nouns Short Shorts is a first-of-its-kind animation festival, run by a collective known as “Nouns Stories.” In September of 2022, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, home to nine-time Emmy Award winning stop-motion series Robot Chicken, teamed up with Goldy from Pixel Studio in Melbourne, former Adult Swim executive Walter Newman, web developer Joel Cares and Joshua Fisher to create the festival, which was paid for entirely by Nouns, a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) that has amassed a treasury of over $50 million USD from the daily auction of digital collectibles sold by the DAO. The treasury is then used to fund public goods, open source technology and to help spread awareness about Nouns DAO through art and other media. Project funding is awarded to proposals that are voted on by the owners of the Nouns digital collectibles.
The short shorts festival proposal was funded in September of 2022, and the 17 short shorts premiered June 13, 2023 at simultaneous events held at Braindead Studios in Los Angeles and Pixel’s studio in Melbourne, Australia. Links to all the Short Shorts films can be found on the Nouns Stories Twitter.
What are some of the qualities that makes this short package stand out from other similar ones?
Two things make this festival unique. First, Nouns is funding artists to make animated shorts that the artists creatively control and own. They’re doing this because Nouns is a CC0 brand (is a public dedication tool, which allows creators to give up their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain), so despite paying artists to make Nouns related content, Nouns stakes no claim to ownership of that content. This open source treatment of IP is a hallmark of Nouns DAO, which embraces the open-source approach to intellectual property (IP). They believe that by giving up their rights to IP and encouraging others to freely contribute and build upon it, innovation and growth can happen more rapidly compared to traditional, controlled brands. We’ve seen the power of open source with emerging technologies (think Linux operating system), but with Nouns we’re seeing it applied to creative IP as well, which is exciting.
Second, this festival features a who’s who from the world of independent animation. Collectively, the contributing artists have amassed millions of fans on platforms like YouYube, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, and many work with the biggest brands in the world. Getting these amazing artists to participate in a festival celebrating a brand almost no one from the animation industry is aware of is a testament to the power of open source IP with an ability to fund artists, which is what Nouns DAO is.
Thanks to all our wonderful filmmakers for making an amazing 1st edition of Nouns Short Shorts!
Below are all the films, and some official announcements of the winners and prizes for those that missed it 👇 pic.twitter.com/GKbFo0zG2p
— Nouns Stories ⌐◨-◨ (@nouns_stories) June 17, 2023
Does Stopped Buddy see the shorts as pilots for future series projects?
For Stoopid Buddy and the entire Nouns Stories creative team, we approached the Short Shorts Festival in the spirit of experimentation. Our primary objective was to put ‘Nouns’ into the hands of some of our favorite animators to see how they’d interpret the brand given full creative control. Having said that, if any of the projects felt like they’d lend themselves to longer form content we’d definitely be interested in exploring that with the creators. Of course, they could do that without us, too!
What was the criteria for participating in the venture?
The only criteria was that the artists needed to feature at least one ‘Noun,’ and each short needed to have run time of at least 15 seconds. We did have a cash prize pool, and to be eligible for prizes artists needed to make their short films CC0. Fifteen of the 17 commissioned artists chose to make their films CC0.
What were the biggest challenges?
There is a lot of skepticism about Web3/NFT projects because of the bad faith of many of the actors in the space over the past few years. A few of the artists we approached were hesitant to participate because of the general fear of being associated with anything to do with crypto or NFTs. We certainly understood this, but once we educated them on the mission of Nouns, and the overall positive tenor of the Nouns community and projects they’ve funded to date — including many public goods and big art installations — and that they’d have full creative control over their work, almost all of them came around and got excited about the opportunity.
What was the overall budget?
The total budget was $182,000, with $127,500 funding the 17 shorts ($7,500 for each short), $12,500 to fund the two live events in Los Angeles and Melbourne, and the remainder as prize money for the six award-winning shorts.
Hear from the filmmakers who were funded by the first Nouns Short Film Festival (part 1) pic.twitter.com/6O3EQOUq7A
— Nouns Stories ⌐◨-◨ (@nouns_stories) June 22, 2023
Which animation tools were used to produce the shorts?
The most exciting aspect of the festival was the breadth of styles and tones, which is a testament to the diversity of artists that were chosen as well as the elastic nature of Nouns itself. Mediums used include CG, traditional hand drawn, stop-motion and live-action puppet.
What is your take on the global animated shorts scene and how do you see it evolving in the future?
With emerging technology and a growing array of distribution platforms that enable artists to reach fans directly, animation is becoming much more democratized. We’re really excited about all the new voices emerging from outside the mainstream, but still there is very little funding for independent content of this nature, especially here in the United States, so we’re excited that Nouns has embraced this community and provided us with the opportunity to fund and spotlight the amazing talent working in animation from all over the world.
What is next for the venture?
With the rousing success of this first festival, Nouns Stories is putting a second proposal forward to the DAO soon. Our plan is to do two festivals a year (featuring up to 30 artists), and for Nouns Stories to become an increasingly high profile home for independent animated short films, creators and their fans. We also believe the festival can become a great incubator for talent and ideas that will eventually find a way to a diverse array of platforms including traditional networks and streamers.
Learn more at the festival page on Prop House, nouns.wtf and leagueofbuddies.com.
