Nouns Fest, a short-film competition and festival, has announced an impressive $1 million pool of funds that will be available in support of indie animated shorts!

The digital art collective Nouns is inviting animators around the globe to submit ideas for Nouns Fest.  The goal of the campaign is to fund shorts of varying lengths, with budgets ranging from $7,500 to $20,000.

So what’s the catch? Final animated shorts must incorporate interpretations of one or more of the “Nouns”—digital art characters that are generated by Nouns and auctioned off daily at Nouns.wtf. Once funded, all rights to the animated shorts, concepts and characters will belong solely to creators, underscoring Nouns’ commitment to a free market of art and ideas.

Selected animated shorts will be presented at Nouns Fest this fall, which will bring together the animation, production and development communities for a celebration of independent animation. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, which helped conceive the project and secure the involvement of Nouns, will produce three original shorts to debut at the festival.

Of the short films accepted into the Nouns Fest project and fully produced, a total of 50 will be included in the Nouns Fest celebration this fall. The exact date and location of the Nouns Fest celebration will be announced in the spring.

Nouns Fest is co-founded by Walter Newman, former head of development for Adult Swim; Nouns veteran Joel Cares; music executive Joshua Fisher; and award-winning animator and director Goldy.

See it for Yourself

Nouns Fest is accepting ideas now for consideration, they can be submitted at nounsfest.tv/apply