Most people here didn’t notice it happen. It happened on the other side of the planet, in a little French town called Annecy, at the biggest animation festival and market in the world. This year, Australia turned up to it in numbers it never has before — more than 40 companies and practitioners, under one banner, on one stand. That’s not a delegation. That’s a statement.
What actually happened
Every June, the industry piles into Annecy for the festival, and attached to it is Mifa — the market where the actual business gets done. Deals, co-productions, financing, hiring. This year, instead of a handful of Aussie studios wandering around independently, they came as one coordinated group under the “Animation Australia” banner: Ausfilm out front, backed by Austrade, with every state screen agency in the country standing behind it — Screen Australia, SAFC, VicScreen, Screen NSW, Screen Queensland, Screenwest, Screen Canberra, Screen Tasmania, Screen Territory. A national stand on the floor, an industry panel on the Aussie-mation boom, a networking function. The pitch to the world was simple: come make your animation here, and take a 30% rebate on the post and visual effects work while you do it.
That’s the hook, but is it working?
Two distinct delegations, one banner
Here’s the bit that only makes sense once you’ve been in the industry a while: this wasn’t one uniform group of companies. It was two distinct delegations travelling under the same banner — an independent, creator-driven contingent, and a large-studio, production-scale contingent. They don’t look alike at all.
The independent contingent was smaller teams and original ideas: Koala Man and Smiling Friends (Princess Pictures/Princess Bento Studio), Lesbian Space Princess (We Made A Thing Studio), Tales from Outer Suburbia (Highly Spirited, adapting Shaun Tan with Flying Bark), and Mr Legs (Studio Showoff). None of these are big-budget productions. They’re punchy, distinctive, and getting noticed well beyond what their size should allow.
The large-studio contingent is where the money, the facilities and the service pipelines live. Flying Bark is the best-known name here, attached to both Stranger Things: Tales of ‘85 and, alongside Cheeky Little Media and Pixel Zoo Animation, the Zac Power animated feature (based on H.I. Larry’s 25-book series, funded by Screen Australia and the ACTF, distributed in ANZ by Paramount). Cosmic Dino Studio is doing the animation work on the Bluey movie, and separately produced the feature The Pout-Pout Fish with Like A Photon, which opened at number 9 on the US box office chart on its release. Armchair Productions, best known locally for the ABC preschool series One, Two, Threebies! and Reef School, was also part of the delegation, as was Mighty Nice, a Sydney studio (a Nexus Studios company) built more around original and branded short-form work than a single flagship series.
And running through several of those large-studio credits is Bluey itself, made in-house at Ludo Studio in Brisbane. The movie’s animation is handled by Cosmic Dino, also based in Brisbane. It’s a useful reminder that “large studio” doesn’t mean one company. On a project like the Bluey movie, it’s a handoff between several.
The part that made me proud
It would have been easy for a showing like this to be all big players — the Blueys and the Flying Barks of the world. It wasn’t. A deliberate chunk of the delegation was built to carry the small teams and solo creators too. The South Australian Film Corporation funded independent practitioners to make the trip, including the team behind a short called Wishes and the creators of Lesbian Space Princess. Screen Queensland backed up to nine local practitioners who were out there actively pitching their own projects.
That matters, because Annecy is brutally expensive to attend. The people with the most original ideas are usually the ones who can least afford to be in the room. Somebody made sure they got in anyway. That’s the healthy version of our industry. Not just the giants, but the next wave getting a real shot.
A quiet, honest aside
There’s a tension in all of this that people in the industry rarely say out loud. The big-studio spotlight is genuinely incredible, and it deserves every bit of attention it gets. But a lot of hearts in this business quietly belong to the smaller, weirder, more personal work — the stuff nobody’s guaranteed to ever see. You can be proud of the big machine and still feel the pull toward the little guys at the same time. Both things are true. A delegation that made room for both is a good sign, not a contradiction.
A reality check
Annecy hands out awards too, and this year Australia didn’t take home the top prizes — those went elsewhere. Worth saying plainly, so I’m not overselling this: this wasn’t about a trophy. It was about showing up at the market, being taken seriously, and coming home with relationships and deals. On that measure, it was a genuine win, and probably a sign of more to come.
Is it a real boom?
Yeah — I think it is. Not because of one big prize or one studio showing the way, but because a whole country turned up together. Big studios and tiny ones side by side, under one banner, and the rest of the world took notice.
If you’re in this industry, or you’re building something small on almost nothing, that’s the crowd this blog is for. Come say hi and ‘Make Animation Great Again’.