Cartoon Network has given the greenlight to a new, wildly imaginative animated series based Julia Pott’s original short, Summer Camp Island. This latest film from the award-winning British animator and illustrator (Belly) has just completed a hot run at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was an official selection in the Animated Short Films track.
The series will extend the short’s enchanting story, continuing to unfurl the mysteries that Oscar and his best friend Hedgehog encounter at a magical summer camp. Summer Camp Island is being produced by Cartoon Network Studios and set to premiere next year.
“Summer Camp Island is a great example of the kind of creativity generated by our acclaimed studio shorts program,” said Rob Sorcher, Cartoon Network’s Chief Content Officer. “We are all wanting to spend summers inside this timeless and magical world captured by Julia’s signature warmth and inventiveness.”
The Summer Camp Island short is making its way around the global festival circuit, having screened and won awards at the Ottawa International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and American Film Institute.
The film centers on two young friends who must summon all their courage to navigate the strange wonders of their magical sleepaway camp — where the counselors are witches, horses become unicorns, and monsters live under the bed. Not all campers get to swim with a talking shark, find a different universe under their bed or make friends with the moon, but anything is possible on Summer Camp Island.
Pott is already part of the Cartoon Network creative team, having joined the studio in 2015 as a write for Adventure Time. She graduated from Kingston University with first class honors. In 2011, she graduated from the Royal College of Art with a Master’s degree in Animation; her graduate film Belly took awards at film festivals in Chicago, Philadelphia and Clermont-Ferrand. Named as one of the 25 new faces of independent films by Filmmaker Magazine in 2012, Pott was also honored as one of the 37 indie film breakouts of that year by Indiewire.
