The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
Laika is an American stop-motion animation studio specializing in feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area. Knight's son, Travis Knight, acts as Laika's president and CEO.
James Baxter is a British character animator. He was first known for his work on several Walt Disney Animation Studios films, including various characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Rafiki in The Lion King, and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Xilam is a French production company which specializes in making animated television series and feature films. Marc du Pontavice and his wife Alix founded it in 1999 as a replacement for the animation division of Gaumont Multimédia. Gaumont continued to have a deal with Xilam until 2003. Gaumont Multimédia was a video game publisher until closing in 2004.
Cartoon Saloon is an Irish animation film, short film and television studio based in Kilkenny which provides film TV and short film services. The studio is best known for its animated feature films The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers. Their works have received five Academy Award nominations, their first four feature length works all received nominations for Best Animated Feature and one for Best Animated Short Film. The company also developed the cartoon series Skunk Fu!, Puffin Rock, Dorg Van Dango and Viking Skool. As of 2020, the studio employs 300 animators.
Theodore Asenov Ushev is a Bulgarian animator, film director and screenwriter based in Montreal. He is best known for his work at the National Film Board of Canada, including the 2016 animated short Blind Vaysha, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
Coyote Falls is a 2010 3D computer-animated Looney Tunes short film featuring the characters Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Directed by Matthew O'Callaghan and written by Tom Sheppard, it is the first Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner short to be made into CGI as well as the first theatrically released 3-D animated short since 1953's Lumber Jack-Rabbit. Coyote Falls was first shown in theaters before Warner Bros.' feature-length film Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. In 2014, Warner Bros. Animation published this short on YouTube.
Triggerfish is a computer animation film studio based in Cape Town, South Africa and Galway, Ireland. The studio is best known for its animated feature films Adventures in Zambezia (2012), Khumba (2013), and Seal Team (2021), as well as the work they have done on television specials created for UK producers Magic Light Pictures. In 2016, Stick Man was awarded the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Festival. In 2017, Revolting Rhymes again won the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy Festival, and was nominated for the Best Short Film (Animated) Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards. In 2019, Netflix announced that Triggerfish would produce its first African animated TV series. In 2020, Zog won the International Emmy for Best Kids Animation. In 2021, The Snail and The Whale won Best Special Production at The Annie Awards, while Triggerfish received the Mifa Animation Industry Award at Annecy for "the pioneering role that the company has played in animation in South Africa, and Africa most widely.” In 2022, their third film, Seal Team, made the Netflix Top 10 Films global list for its launch week.
Gitanjali Rao is an Indian theatre actress, animator and film maker.
Me and My Moulton is a 2014 Canadian-Norwegian animated short film written and directed by Torill Kove. It premiered at the 2014 Annecy International Animated Film Festival on 10 June 2014. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 87th Academy Awards. Me and My Moulton won the Golden Sheaf Award for Best Animation at the 2015 Yorkton Film Festival.
Aniventure is a British content creation and intellectual property company based in London and set up in 2013 to produce family-oriented feature animation.
Blind Vaysha is a 2016 animated short by Theodore Ushev, produced by Marc Bertrand for the National Film Board of Canada, with the participation of ARTE France. Based on a story by Georgi Gospodinov, the film tells the story of a girl who sees the past out of her left eye and the future from her right—and so is unable to live in the present. Montreal actress Caroline Dhavernas performed the narration for the film, in both its French and English language versions. The film incorporates music from Bulgarian musician and composer Kottarashky and is his and Ushev's fourth collaboration.
Looney Tunes Cartoons is an American animated television series developed by Peter Browngardt and produced by Warner Bros. Animation, based on the characters from Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The series made its worldwide debut at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 10, 2019, and premiered on HBO Max on May 27, 2020.
I Lost My Body is a 2019 French adult animated fantasy drama film directed by Jérémy Clapin, based on the novel Happy Hand by Guillaume Laurant. It premiered in the International Critics' Week section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Nespresso Grand Prize, becoming the first animated film to do so in the section's history. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards, but lost to Toy Story 4.
Sister is a 2018 stop motion animated film directed by Siqi Song during her studies at CalArts Experimental Animation Program as her graduation film.
Hors Piste is a 2018 CG animated short film directed by Oscar Malet, Léo Brunel, Camille Jalabert & Loris Cavalier during their studies at l'École des Nouvelles Images, French animation school. This short has been presented and won awards in a number of festivals including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the Aspen Shortsfest, the Flickerfest, The Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films and the New York International Children's Film Festival where it won the Oscar Qualifying prize for best animation.
Siqi Song is a Chinese director and animator.
Daughter is a 2019 Czech short animated drama film directed by Daria Kashcheeva. The film received 38 awards during half a year after its premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, including the Annecy Cristal for the best film in the graduation films category, and a Student Academy Award. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Ronald J. Diamond is an American film producer from Los Angeles, CA. He is the founder of Acme Filmworks, the Animation Show of Shows and the co-founder of Animation World Network.
Špela Čadež is a Slovenian director and film producer of animated films. She is mostly known for her use of the multiplane camera technique in her animated films.
