Adult Swim President Michael Ouweleen On Finding Animation’s Next Generation Of Creators

At this year’s Annecy Festival, Cartoon Brew sat down with Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen to discuss the network’s unusually creator-first approach to animation, why he thinks of Adult Swim as a record label rather than a traditional studio, and how the company has increasingly looked beyond the U.S. for new voices.

He also spoke with us about the evolution of the Adult Swim Smalls program, the challenges facing independent animators, and why Annecy has become an essential growth opportunity for the network.

Cartoon Brew: Adult Swim has always felt different from other major animation studios. Looking at your slate from the outside, there’s no obvious formula. How do you decide what belongs at Adult Swim?

Michael Ouweleen: It’s case by case. I think of us more like a record label. We’re signing artists we believe in. If you’re Genndy Tartakovsky, you’re putting out different albums than someone directing their first project. They’re all making similar music, but each one sounds different. That’s how we think about it.

We buy into the creator more than the concept, almost always. Our job is to help them deliver that concept. Most of our notes to them are simply, “This part confused me,” or, “I don’t think this character is there yet.” Animation is different from live action. People have to start drawing it and hearing it before they really know what they’ve got.

When we’re watching animatics, we’re asking simple questions: Is it making us laugh? Is it moving us? Is it surprising us? If it is, then our job becomes protecting that magic through the rest of production, because that’s when things naturally start getting sanded down.

We’re not thinking about how something fits into the marketplace. We’re asking: Is it new? Is it different? Would somebody else make this? If the answer is yes, then maybe it isn’t for us.

One thing that’s really stood out over the past few years is how much Adult Swim has embraced creators from outside the traditional American system. How important is it to you to look internationally for talent?

That’s actually why we started coming to Annecy about five years ago. Europe wasn’t really making adult animation, so we wanted to be here and start those conversations.

Part of what we’re doing every year is showing people how to work with us, because our model is very different from the European model. European animation is often built around co-productions and public funding. We almost work in the opposite direction. We find a creator with a singular voice and back that creator. Then we work with studios all over Europe, Canada, Latin America, wherever the production makes sense.

If someone has an authentic point of view, we don’t really care where they’re from. In fact, don’t bring us something that feels like an American show. We don’t want that.

The mistake is trying to make something that works equally well in Spain, Germany, Italy, and everywhere else. Instead, come from your own point of view. Hopefully it’s specific enough that it becomes universal.

Programs like Adult Swim Smalls seem to have become an important part of discovering those voices.

We’ve noticed you covering those, and we really appreciate it because we’re genuinely trying to elevate people, especially at a time when there isn’t as much work as there used to be.

In the U.S., independent animation doesn’t have the same support system that exists elsewhere. There’s very little public funding. So creators are going directly to audiences through Patreon, YouTube, TikTok, wherever they can. I’m here for it. I just hope those platforms eventually pay people. My middle son is an animator. He got a million views on TikTok two days ago with a five-minute cartoon. He’s trying to figure this out, too, while also having a regular job. I have nothing but empathy for this generation of creators.

Our job at Adult Swim is to help create a pathway. Someone builds an audience independently, and hopefully we can help them turn that into a career making animation.

Cartoon Brew: Has the Smalls program evolved from what you originally intended?

Completely. Originally we were just experimenting. We thought maybe there was something digital there for Adult Swim, but we weren’t really sure what.

[Creative Director] Dave Hughes kept asking me, “What exactly are we doing?” My answer for about two years was basically, “Let’s keep going. We’ll figure it out.”

Eventually we realized Smalls is really our shorts program. More importantly, it’s a way to build relationships with creators early in their careers. It’s actually less about any individual idea than it is about working with talented people before anyone else does.

Cartoon Brew: It seems like that philosophy may be studio-wide.

Our development team is tiny, four people plus me, and Dave running Smalls. That constant back-and-forth is how we operate.

Our marketing creative team has also been making Adult Swim IDs for years with students and emerging artists from around the world, people no other U.S. media company is calling. Those five- and ten-second pieces use the same creative muscles as making a series. They’re a way of showing new artists how to communicate with an adult audience and how to work with a studio. That’s part of our mission, too.

Cartoon Brew: That mentorship feels very connected to animation’s history.

That’s why I love animation. There’s still this tradition of helping the next person. It’s a craft. Almost like a guild. Like shoemaking.

That culture is still alive, and that’s why Annecy is so special.