SDCC 2016: Nick Presents: Women In Animation Panel Recap!

While it was overshadowed Friday night by other big events like the Sonic 25th Anniversary party, The Nick hosted Women in Animation Panel at Comic Con was easily one of the biggest highlights of the connvention.

Hosted by Nick and Moderated by Variety’s Laura Prudom, this panel featured an amazing panel of women including Lauren Faust (MLP:FIM, Super Best Friends Forever) Mary Harrington (Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life), Vanessa Coffey (Rugrats, Doug), Rikke Asbjoern (Pinky Malinky), Margaret Dean (Women in Animation), and Maija Burnett (CalArts). During the panel, these women brought some great insight into the world of animation and their struggles, and I’m here to give you an abridged version of it.

The panel started with a quick introduction of all the panelists and then proceeded to talk about how different the animation field was when they entered the business. They talked about how most shows were being made to just sell products or were aimed towards only a specific gender or demographic. They talked about the struggle to get original cartoons made and how Nick helped usher in the creator driven era in animation where shows were no longer about selling a product or catering to a specific age or gender, but instead telling fun stories that both kid and adults can appreciate.

Next, they moved on to talk a bit about Lauren Faust and her experiences with the industry. She talked about how her first job outside of school was getting the amazing opportunity to animate for films like Cats Don’t Dance and The Iron Giant. She also touched on other subjects like when she tried pitching her possible toy line Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls, but was instead rejected by Hasbro in favor of the offer to help them reboot and breathe new life into the My Little Pony franchise. In the end she ended up accepting the job, and the rest is just about history as the MLP brand is one of the companies biggest staples now because of Faust and her crew.

After that, they went to talk about upcoming and aspiring animators that they try to help every day. They mentioned how great it is that a lot of women are finally getting their chance to have their own shows made and how positive the reception to them has been. Steven Universe and Star Vs. the Forces of Evil were some examples of how positive reception to female creator driven shows have been. They then showed off a short animation by that Rikke Asbjoern helped with called My Friend Pancake. The short centered around a young girl who was friends with a giant cat that seems to be a bit timid. It was a funny and cute short that showed off the talents of upcoming female animators.

Finally, Rikke talked a bit about one of Nick’s upcoming new shows, Pinky Malinky. She talked about how she’s had the idea for this show forever and that as she continued to grow and learn about animation, so did Pinky. She seemed very excited to finally be able to talk and show people the show. They then showed us a couple of small clips of the show as well as some stills. After that, they ended the panel by telling people to help them with a cause called Women in Animation 50/50 which is an initiative to get women animation creatives up from 20% to 50% by the year 2025. If you’d like to help with this cause, check it out right here!

In the end, I can’t say enough good things about this panel. It’s a real shame if you weren’t able to attend the panel if you were at the convention, but hopefully my abridged recap of it helped convince you. Did you enjoy the write-up? Tell me in the comments below!