Sony Pictures Animation Partnering With Fred Seibert's Cartoon Hangover YouTube Channel To Find New Wave Of Animation Talent

CULVER CITY, Calif., Nov. 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Pictures Animation today announced it would partner with animation pacesetter Fred Seibert to forge GO! Cartoons, a new idea incubator project that will provide emerging artists an incredible opportunity:  a chance to turn their ideas into animated shorts that will debut on Seibert's Cartoon Hangover YouTube channel, with its more than 1.3 million subscribers.  Sony Pictures Animation will fund 12 five-minute animated shorts, with one premiering every month on Cartoon Hangover's YouTube channel.  One of those shorts will then become a limited series for the channel.  This, in turn, will bring promising talent and animated content to the attention of Sony Pictures Animation through an alternative development method.     

Bob Osher, President of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, states, "Fred Seibert is a force of nature in animation, and we are thrilled to expand our current relationship with him by partnering on this.  This is a great opportunity for Sony Pictures Animation to find new talent that might not emerge from more traditional platforms. Fred has a proven track record with this type of incubator project, with series after series launched from them, including The Powerpuff Girls, The Fairly OddParents and Adventure Time.  Hotel Transylvania director Genndy Tartakovsky was also an incubator find—Fred and I were in the first meeting where he pitched the idea for the hit series Dexter's Laboratory."

Fred Seibert—whose boundless creativity has given rise to multiple networks like MTV, pioneered the reinvention of TV animation and helped establish tumblr—explains, "We've discovered amazing young talent through these unique incubators, and for the artists, this is an easier way to be seen.  For Sony Pictures Animation, it provides different methods to develop projects.  And for Cartoon Hangover, it's a great way to shake the trees for new talent thanks to the involvement of a major animation studio like Sony Pictures Animation—and we'll continue to fund and produce content our own unique way."

Seibert and his team at Frederator Studios, his independent animation studio, have successfully expanded the appeal of new animation beyond the expected demographics.  Cartoon Hangover's most recent incubator lab, Too Cool! Cartoons, has brought "cartoons from new and innovative creators all over the world, right to your eyeballs," including Bee & PuppyCat, from Natasha Allegri—which garnered more than 4 million views, with 50% female viewers.  Frederator Studios went directly to viewers via Kickstarter, and more than 18,000 fans ponied up in excess of $850,000 to bankroll the series, a record-breaking amount for any animation project start-up.   

Sony Pictures Animation is the Academy Award® nominated studio responsible for blockbuster comedy hits such as Open Season, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania, and The Smurfs.  The animation studio will be releasing Hotel Transylvania 2 next Fall, once again directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, and a fully animated, as yet untitled Smurfs feature in summer 2016.

To pitch a cartoon, please read the GO! Cartoons FAQ   - http://cartoonhangover.com/gocartoonsfaq/

ABOUT SONY PICTURES ANIMATION
Sony Pictures Animation produces a variety of animated and family entertainment for audiences around the world.  The studio is following its worldwide comedy hits—the 2012 monster hit comedy Hotel Transylvania, the hybrid live action/animated blockbusters The Smurfs and The Smurfs 2, and the mouth-watering Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies—with the family comedies Hotel Transylvania 2 scheduled in September 2015 and Untitled Smurfs Movie in August 2016.  Sony Pictures Animation also released a critically acclaimed, brand new mini-movie on DVD and television last Fall, The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow.  The studio, in conjunction with Aardman Animations, has produced two critically acclaimed feature films:  the CG-animated family comedy Arthur Christmas; and the Academy Award® nominated stop-frame animated high-seas adventure, The Pirates! Band of Misfits.  In 2007, Surf's Up also received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Animated Feature Film.  The division, whose first feature film Open Season led to a very successful movie franchise, turned 10 in 2012.  Sony Pictures Animation is an operating unit of Sony Pictures Digital Productions.

• Website: http://www.sonypicturesanimation.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SONYPicturesAnimation
• Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/sonyanimation
• Tumblr: http://sonyanimation.tumblr.com/
• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SonyAnimation

ABOUT FREDERATOR
Frederator operates Frederator Networks and Frederator Studios. Frederator Networks programs the online channels Channel Frederator and Cartoon Hangover as well as manages the Channel Frederator Network, a YouTube based animation and entertainment multi-channel network. The Channel Frederator Network is the largest animation network on YouTube with over 1000 channels doing 70+ million views/month and growing. Launched in late 2012, Frederator's Cartoon Hangover channel includes the hit series Bravest Warriors created by Pendleton Ward, Natasha Allegri's Bee and PuppyCat, which has gone to series funded by the biggest animation or web series Kickstarter campaign ever, as well as many new shorts from the world's future animation superstars. Frederator has offices in Burbank, CA and New York, NY.

Frederator Studios makes cartoons for television, movies and the Internet and was founded by serial media entrepreneur and former Hanna-Barbera president Fred Seibert in 1998 as a unique incubator for big animation ideas by producing original cartoons. More than 200 short films have resulted in 16 hit series for television and the Internet, including Butch Hartman's The Fairly OddParents on Nickelodeon and Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time on Cartoon Network.  Frederator is in partnership with Sony Pictures Animation to develop and produce animated feature films, and with YouTube to create television-quality cartoons on the Internet.

• http://youtube.com/cartoonhangover
• http://cartoonhangover.com/gocartoons
• http://frederator.com
• http://channelfrederatornetwork.com

SOURCE Sony Pictures Animation