TLDR
On the heels of Prop 180’s and Prop 73’s overwhelming success, we’re rallying the creative forces once again on what promises to be our biggest and most impactful proposal yet. Nouns Stories is seeking $1,795,000 to develop, produce and distribute over 50 Animated Nouns Shorts on a global scale with nine time Emmy-Award winners Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, along with 50 of the best animators in the world.
NOUNS: FRONT AND CENTER
Most sources of financing for animated content are tied to networks that move at a snail’s pace and that are not considered artist friendly. This is where Nouns steps in to disrupt the system. We want to provide the proper funding to attract the world’s best animators, help them bring their ideas to life, and in so doing — put Nouns DAO on the map as the number one source for innovative, diverse storytelling in animation.
Not only that, but by making Nouns DAO the seed funder we’re putting the Nouns IP (and the brand’s aesthetic) front and center on a series of innovative and hilarious shorts that are bound to get massive amounts of attention with animation fans all around the world. What better way to spread the Nounish vibes and garner some positive attention?
PERSON, PLACE & THING: 3 THEMATIC ROUNDS, 50 CREATORS, 1 YEAR
Over the course of the next twelve months we’ll onboard 50 of the world’s most innovate animators to create engaging animated shorts featuring great characters, engaging storylines, and Nounish vibes. By expanding the run times and upping the budgets, we’ll give the animators the opportunity to produce even MORE engaging visuals and storylines!
We’ll roll out the animated shorts over three themed rounds. Other than requiring the films to feature Nouns characters or Noggles, we’ll encourage the animators to go absolutely wild with the best and funniest ideas: the ones that may not exist within the walled gardens of Hollywood. Because not every artist has the bandwidth to produce longer form shorts, we’ll keep the Short Shorts 15 second+ format for some of our creators.
In total the three themed rounds will feature:
- 12 x 2-3 minute Shorts
- 38 x 15-30 second Short Shorts
- 3 original shorts by the team at Stoopid Buddy
50 OF THE WORLD’S BEST
We’ll cast our net wide to onboard the best animators we can muster, and by allowing them the creative freedom to do what they do, we believe we’ll get the very best out of them. Not only that, but many of these talented folks already have huge followings online which will further expose the Nouns DAO to their legions of fans when we go live with the shorts and the post them to their own socials.
3 STOOPID SHORTS
To kick off each thematic round, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios will pour all of their Nouns-lovin’-energy (see: Rose Parade / forthcoming Nouns Documentary) into making something truly special for Nouns — a love letter in animation like only they can. They’ll tap their A-list Buddies to create and voice these fully original mini-movies, creating some hilarious cohesion to what promises to be a wildly eclectic program!
CC0 Heroes
As we did in the first Nouns Short Shorts Festival, we’ll encourage each animator to embrace Nounish culture by opting in to making their shorts CC0. While it won’t be required, opting into to CC0 will make their films eligible for some damn fine awards and cash prizes!
OH YEAH…ONE MORE THING
We’ll be hosting a Nountastic IRL animation festival to premiere these amazing shorts, attracting Nounish animation fans from all over the world. Why do this when we could just hide behind the safety of our computer monitors? Because as we experienced with the first screening at Braindead Studios in Los Angeles (in conjunction with the Melbourne screening at Pixel), there’s an energy and magic to bringing communities together to share in a truly unique experience that will help put Nouns DAO on the map. We’ll invite all our industry pals, and will we live-stream the whole thing just as we did before? Abso-fucking-lutely!
IMPACT: NETWORK EFFECT
The first round of shorts garnered over a million views in the first month of release across creator and owned social channels. Most of these views were native to the creator channels of the animators themselves — providing a whole new audience for Nouns. This time around, we’ll not only continue to seek out animators with their own audiences, but amplify views across all platforms with a social media marketing campaign and enlisting a PR firm to bolster awareness of what we’re up to. On top of this, to build anticipation and excitment for the festival as the year unfolds, we'll create original promotional content, including teasers and trailers, behind the scenes footage, and creator profiles. Check out some of the postings from our first Shorts Shorts Festival below!
THE NOUNS STORIES TEAM
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
9 time Emmy-winning studio behind Robot Chicken, and producer of over 1,000 hours of animated television **including: Crossing Swords, Mickey Saves Christmas, and Marvel’s MODOK. Stoopid Buddy is a pioneering independent studio that has helped drive the tremendous growth in adult animation over the past decade. Co-founder Eric Towner and Head of Development Chris Waters have deep roots in the Nouns ecosystem. Their first proposal funded the Nouns Rose Parade Float (seen by over 30 million people) and both are producers of the forthcoming documentary about Nouns.
Walter Newman
Former SVP of program development at Adult Swim who oversaw such shows as Rick & Morty, Tuca and Bertie, Smiling Friends, Black Dynamite, and more. Walter brings network experience and a deep talent roster to the Nouns Stories team.
Goldy / Pixel
Goldy's Oscar-Shortlisted hybrid production studio is behind nounish ⌐◨-◨ and the animated short film "The Wizards Hat" from the original Nouns Stories proposal.
Joshua Fisher
Manager of Grammy-winning music producers, music publisher, SharkDAO Rep, Ugly Noun, The Nouns Square co-founder, Nouns DAO Builder and Nouns narrative advocate.
Joel Cares
CEO of Lobal Global / ANOA, creator of Nerman, founding member of Nouncil, creative director @ JoelCares.net.
OUR ROLES
We’ve got the experience, knowledge, and relationships to successfully pull off this wildly ambitious proposal. Not only will we be identifying top-tier talent from our own networks of creators, but we’ll also be recruiting on a global scale to identify and onboard the next generation of up-and-coming animation talent.
We’ll be managing and coordinating a massive effort to create decentralized content and creatively package it in a way that connects with audiences around the globe. Not only that, but we’ll be tapping our extensive network to best position our exposure and distribution of the program online, at festivals, and beyond. We’ll be coordinating a social media / marketing and PR strategy, as well as presenting “behind the scenes” access and status updates to the DAO as this undertaking fully develops.
BEYOND THE PROP
The Nouns Stories team has over 613,620ish hours of experience in animation development, production, marketing, distribution and sales. Our team is well positioned to take these Nounish creations beyond what is promised in the proposal. Our hope is we can continue to develop the best-of-the-best beyond their existence as a short, and seed Nounish content and characters into the mainstream zeitgeist. Think about it — The Simpsons, South Park, Rick & Morty, and hell, even Robot Chicken, all got their start as animated shorts.
THAT’S A WRAP!
Animation drives cultural conversation. There’s a white space in animation that Nouns DAO is uniquely positioned to fill. Nimble development. Artist friendly. Global reach. We believe there’s a more “Nounish” way to produce the next great animated shorts, and that we have the team to help find them and make them.
For Nouns, there’s an opportunity to be front-and-center in one of the most passionate arenas in pop culture and create break-out successes that proliferate the meme.
Our team has poured our hearts and souls into the Nouns experiment since it’s inception, and we’ve proven we can develop world-class animation and execute on ambitious ideas. We believe in a new way of generating content and organizing passionate communities of creators and fans. Together we can change the culture and build Nouns DAO into the next great destination for animation, so slap on your dang Noggles and let’s do this!!
BUDGET BREAKDOWN
TOTAL: $1,795,000 USDC 50% distributed upon commencement, 50% upon completion of first round.
Animation Content - $1,270,000
- 12 x 2-3 min shorts (3 rounds, 4 per round, $20k/short) - $240K
- 38 x 15-30 sec Short Shorts (3 rounds, 12 to 13 shorts per round, $7.5k/short) - $285K
- Three Original Shorts + packaging from Stoopid Buddy - $450K
- Nounish Trailers / Behind-the-Scenes / Festival Recap Docs / Creator Profiles - $150K
- “CC0 Hero” Awards (3 rounds, 15K per round) - $45K
- Animation Festival - $100K
Management and Production - $430K
- Exec Producer Fees - $300K
- artist outreach and curation
- creative oversight and curation
- promotion
- Producer - $100K
- Animator management
- Scheduling, Accounting and Deliverables
- Web build and upkeep - $30K
General Operations - $95K
- Publicist - $15K
- Social Media Mgr - $15K
- Legal+Accounting - $20K
- Event Planner - $20K
- Team Travel & Accommodation - allow $25K