Multiplatform company Skybound Entertainment announced the acquisition and revival of Spike & Mike’s iconic animation events at the Toronto Animation Arts Festival (TAAFI) this weekend. Beginning today, submissions are open for short films from creators across North America.
The first window of submissions will be free and open for 60 days, beginning November 4, 2023 and ending January 3, 2024.
“I’m incredibly appreciative of Skybound’s respect and understanding of what the Spike & Mike brand has accomplished, and what we can continue to offer,” said Craig “Spike” Decker, Co-Founder of Spike & Mike. “I’m excited to see what they’re able to do for existing Spike & Mike work and look forward to developing a new chapter with them.”
Artists, universities and organizations from around the globe with a library of animated shorts can also submit original works for the chance to be featured in the newly minted Skybound Presents: Spike & Mike’s library.
Details of the festival, including partnerships, are still being finalized but organizers are working towards awards and prizes including project stipends, acquisitions and development opportunities.
“Bringing this iconic brand under the Skybound umbrella is an enormous opportunity to bring Spike & Mike’s rebel origins to the masses and expand upon what we’re already doing in adult animation,” said Rick Jacobs, Managing Partner of Linear Content, Skybound Entertainment. “Co-founder Mike Gribble once stated that their mission was ‘to find the most original, funniest and weirdest animation in the world and play it.’ Digitizing the festivals opens the doors for — and to — millions of talented of creators across the globe who will shepherd a new generation of animation.”
Skybound’s plan is to not only bring back the live screening celebrations, but to also offer a handpicked array of animated shorts on an online platform, accessible to viewers worldwide. The new Spike & Mike’s will also forge collaborations with contemporary animation creators across a variety of mediums and platforms, while finding new avenues to bring back classic festival favorites or create fresh stories inspired by shorts in the Spike & Mike library.
Since its inception in the late 1970s, Spike & Mike’s curated festivals, including the renowned Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, have showcased cutting-edge, daring and often hilarious animated shorts. These guerilla style festivals became the theatrical launchpad for many well-known creative voices, including Pete Doctor (CCO, Pixar; director, Monsters, Inc., Up), Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head) and Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit). As animation historian Jerry Beck put it, “Spike & Mike came from nowhere with nothing and created a market where none existed.”
“Spike & Mike has been a seminal platform for creative voices in animation,” said Marge Dean, Head of Studio at Skybound Entertainment. “There would be no place for shows like Invincible to exist without their efforts to develop a safe space for creators to express both the uplifting and introspective or ‘sick and twisted’ in an incredibly innovative, complex, and boundless art form.”
Learn more and submit your films to the relaunched events — including the classic Spike & Mike’s Festival of Animation and Sick & Twisted as well as the brand-new, highfalutin Arty Farty fest — at spikeandmikefest.com.
