Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation is a presentation of award-winning animated short films, annually touring throughout theaters, film festivals or college campuses in the United States.
The festival premieres annually in the La Jolla (Village) neighborhood seated in San Diego, California then tours to theatres, film festivals, and college campuses currently in about a dozen North American cities.
Mellow Manor Productions, Inc. was founded by Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble, known as "Spike & Mike" in Riverside, California in the 1970s as a means of promoting rock bands and special screenings of horror films as well as movie classics. It was named after Riverside's notorious Victorian house "The Manor" where Spike, Mike, and many others lived in a communal set. The Manor was the original flagship and production house of the Festival. After spending mid-1977 giving out flyers for the Fantastic Animation Festival , [1] they focused on presenting a flight of animated films and booking the Festival of Animation in venues across the country, which eventually becoming a 50 city tour.
The Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation began in 1990 at Wheeler Auditorium at UC Berkeley. This is an unrated, adult version of the regular program mainly featuring satyric, non sequitur and gross-out cartoons. In the Festival's early days, Spike and Mike took the stage, introduced the films in ringmaster style. 3 foot (0.91 m) balloons were volleyed into fan seating before showtime to burn off street energy. The reel header was flanked by a bagpipe and drum battle march over a cartoon of Spike's Scottish Terrier on screen wreaking havoc on the titles. The dog took the stage and was driven to shred objects.
Before the Festival of Animation, it was difficult to see independent, experimental, and foreign animation. Spike and Mike went on yearly worldwide film hunting expeditions. They signed on animation from the National Film Board of Canada, CalArts, Sheridan, Royal College of Art, Annecy, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Ottawa and select studios active among the art-house scene that did not have a public venue. In the 1990s, Spike and Mike screened early films from animators including Nick Park, Marv Newland, Tim Burton, Barry Purves, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Will Vinton.
The shows have toured in theaters, film festivals such as (Cannes, Sundance, Annecy), college campuses, and dynamic events such as the Vans Warped Tour, the Winter X Games, ComiCon, and with the nu-metal band Korn.
Initially, Spike and Mike produced the Classic Festival and later both the Classic and Sick and Twisted simultaneously. But by the early 2000s, the Classic Festival of Animation was put on hiatus in favor of the Sick and Twisted Festival. Spike and Mike's New Gen Show was created in place of the Classic Festival to show films that did not fit into the category of "sick and twisted".
A select set of the short films in the festival were produced at Mellow Manor, some partially and others in-full. Artists' conceptualized or unfinished elements were often accepted for financial and pipeline assistance in completing production. Some stages of an artist's production were contracted out for specialized work.
Mike Gribble died from cancer in August 1994, and Spike would continue to produce touring theatrical festivals of animated short film collections.
In November 2023, Skybound Entertainment announced that it had acquired the festival and has plans to revitalize it. [2] [3]
In the 1990s, Spike and Mike showed work from animators such as Craig McCracken, Miles Thompson, Danny Antonucci, Benjamin Gluck, Dave Smith, Steve Fonti, Craig Kellman, and Mike Judge. Several films under Spike and Mike's Mellow Manor Productions were funded either partially or entirely from concept to completion (such as Mike Judge's first Beavis and Butthead films). Working beyond their initial projects, many of these artists have become prominent in the industry and independent creatives, commercial artists, painters, screenwriters, and designers. Several have become nominated for or won honors including Oscars, Emmys, and Annie Awards.
The Ren & Stimpy Show, commonly referred to as simply Ren & Stimpy, is an American comedy animated television series created by John Kricfalusi, and developed by Kricfalusi, Bob Camp, Jim Smith and Lynne Naylor for Nickelodeon. Originally produced by Spümcø, the series aired on Nickelodeon from August 11, 1991, to December 16, 1995, with its last episode airing on MTV on October 20, 1996, spanning for a total of five seasons and 52 episodes. The series follows the misadventures of Ren Höek, an emotionally unstable and psychotic chihuahua dog; and Stimpy, a good-natured and dimwitted Manx cat. It is the third cartoon to be aired of the original three Nickelodeon animated series known as "Nicktoons", alongside Doug and Rugrats, and is considered to be one of the progenitor series of the brand.
The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
Michael John Kricfalusi, known professionally as John K., is a Canadian illustrator, blogger, and former animator and voice actor. He is the creator of the animated television series The Ren & Stimpy Show, which was highly influential on televised animation during the 1990s. From 1989 to 1992, he was heavily involved with the first two seasons of the show in virtually every aspect of its production, including providing the voice of Ren Höek and other characters. In 2009, he won the Inkpot Award.
The Animation Show is a touring festival of animated short films that was first held in fall 2003. It was sponsored by MTV, and was created by award-winning animators Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt.
Tom and Jerry is an American animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series centers on the enmity between the titular characters of a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. Many shorts also feature several recurring characters.
Craig McCracken is an American cartoonist, animator, director, writer, and producer known for creating Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Disney Channel and Disney XD's Wander Over Yonder, and Netflix's Kid Cosmic.
Rejected is a 2000 animated surrealist short comedy film directed by Don Hertzfeldt that was released in 2000. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the following year at the 73rd Academy Awards, and received 27 awards from film festivals around the world.
Danny Antonucci is a Canadian animator, director, producer, and writer. He created the Cartoon Network animated comedy series Ed, Edd n Eddy as well as Lupo the Butcher and The Brothers Grunt for MTV.
Lupo the Butcher is a 1987 Canadian adult animated short comedy film directed and written by Danny Antonucci. The short follows the story of a butcher who has a huge temper and swears at his meat when the smallest things go wrong. Produced by Marv Newland's International Rocketship Limited, Lupo the Butcher was a successful short and has earned itself a cult following.
Steven Fonti, also known as Steve Fonti, is a Primetime Emmy Award winner who has worked in the Art Department on movies such as Over the Hedge and Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights, Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, Pooh's Heffalump Movie, Osmosis Jones and TV shows including The Simpsons, Family Guy and Futurama. He was also a writer and the storyboard director for Nickelodeon's animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. He also worked on an episode of The Powerpuff Girls called "Catastrophe".
Save Virgil is a short independent film by Brad Ableson that mixes live action with animation, released on March 3, 2004. It features the voice of Adam Carolla as the title character who is a human cartoon living in real world. It made its television premiere on G4's Happy Tree Friends and Friends series.
Justin Bastard Sane is an American comic book creator, film director, puppeteer and animator. His comic books are done in a silhouette style reminiscent of early film and his movies feature sex, violence and satirical comedy.
Lone Sausage is an independent production company that produces short animated films. The company was founded in 1998 by Breehn Burns and Jason Johnson. Their most popular production is the absurdist miniseries entitled Dr. Tran. Lone Sausage's cartoons are distributed primarily via the web through an association with Mondo Mini Shows. The shorts were released to DVD in 2006 and are frequently shown at touring festivals such as Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Lone Sausage is characterized by their logo of a single sausage served in a small bowl.
Fantastic Animation Festival is a package film of animation segments, set mostly to music and released in theaters in 1977. It was one of the earliest of the sort of collections typified by Computer Animation Festival and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.
Frog Baseball is an animated short film created by Mike Judge in 1992, which marks the first appearance of the Beavis and Butt-Head characters. It premiered in The Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.
The Honky Problem is a 1991 animated short film by Mike Judge. It features an original character, Inbred Jed, who is playing with his country music band somewhere in the desert by a trailer for a small audience of American white trash.
James Garland Quintel is an American animator, storyboard artist, director, writer, producer, and voice actor. He is best known as the creator of the Cartoon Network series Regular Show (2010–2017), in which he voiced Mordecai and High Five Ghost, and the HBO Max series Close Enough (2020–2022), in which he voiced Josh.
Skybound Entertainment is an American multiplatform entertainment company founded by Robert Kirkman and David Alpert. It operates in concert with Image Comics.
Jerry Beck is an American animation historian, author, blogger, and video producer.
In the United States, before the enforcement of the Hays Code, some cartoon shorts contained humor that was aimed at adult audience members rather than children. Following the introduction of the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system, independent animation producers attempted to establish an alternative to mainstream animation. Initially, few animation studios in the United States attempted to produce animation for adult audiences, but later examples of animation produced for adults would gain mainstream attention and success. Some of the most prominent animations with these mature/adult themes include Aqua Teen Hunger Force, BoJack Horseman, South Park, Family Guy, Mission Hill, and Archer, along with other adult animated television series, feature films, and animation in other forms which helped the genre expand over the years, beyond animated sitcoms.
