B E A F C O R E
M A N I F E S T O

BEAFCORE ANIMATION is anti-industry. it's anti-homogeny. anti-workflow. anti-marketing. in many ways, it's anti-animation.

the digital age of art cannot innovate if it exists to simply emulate and streamline the physical mediums. we must embrace the infinite programs at our dispisal, old and new. we must utilize all the resources and tools at our disposal in the internet age, copyrighted or not. we must pirate the Adobe Suite on 1337x.to and crate dig through the ancient programs and virtual machines of archive.org. we musn't limit ourselves to the comfort of what we know animation to be, we must instead frame our artform as the pursuit of creating "experimental video files" and embrace the endless possibilities which that entails.

these films cannot exist for festivals as they exist traditionally. these films have to be built to be fundamentally incompatible with academic accolades. these films can only exist for the vision of the artist, for the artist excited to explore the decades of tools accumulated on the library of babel that is the internet, all of which are free for everyone with enough technological know-how.

the following is a list of commonalities between beafcore toons as well as a guideline to embracing beafcore ideology:

#1. copyright collage

use copyrighted music. use google images. sample videos on youtube. fuck them up. warp them. distort them. make them your own. use them to tell your own story, add your own meaning. they are there for the taking and don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. that's what the computer exists for! (giving credit is moral tho teehee)

#2. multidisciplinary

use as many programs as you can. pirate them if you must. create virtual machines of Windows XP or emulate the Amiga to use outdated software. take those video files, mesh them with After Effects, Flash CS5, RPGMaker, Sony Vegas, Blender, OBS, PowerPoint, Google SketchApp, FlipaClip, Tux Paint, Mario Paint, Machinima, Smash Bros. Stage Builder. experiment with the physical mediums like film and traditional multiplane animation and see how you can expand the process deeper with the computer. use anything and everything you can!

the computer and smartphone break through the material priviledge of having the dosh and space to accumulate the tools to comfortably experiment as one would with the physical mediums, one of the few benefits of our digitally driven age.

however, the trajectory of computer software in becoming more and more "streamlined" is a disservice to the computers capability for providing a variety of unique (often called janky) workspaces and tools. when every program becomes photoshop 2.0 or toonboom 2.0 then what's the point of using anything else? use a program for the uniqueness it provides, don't fight against it. push yourself out of a comfort zone and try to create something you never have before with something you've never used before!

#3. rage against the dying of the artform

the benefit of these anti-status quo ideals are not only aesthetic, they are spiritual and thematic. independent experimental animation has been an amazing medium for LGBT and neurodivergent voices. no longer do we need to go into debt and squirm through pipelines and filter through formalities to actualize our visions, the ability to create is at our fingertips more than ever. anything we can create and anything we shall!

tell bizarre stories in bizarre ways. don't tell stories at all. speak in the mental language only you can understand. uninstall Celt-X, the paintbrush is your screenplay.

it's true that posting onto the wastelands of the internet can be an algorithmic diceroll for having your voice heard, but that's not the precious aspect of the computer & the internet. the art product, the mp4, is made and that's what matters. sharing the art experience in the vastness of the internet sucks (at least nowadays) and there's no defending that.

organize locally! share art with your friends. throw parties for you and your friends' art. create festivals in your local scene. cultivate your own echochamber for encouraging and pushing your artforms to their extremes. start a band. nobody has to know what they're doing. love your art blindly, undyingly, and do whatever you feel is right to nurture that love above all. if you love and believe in your art, it will be heard. find people who hear you, they're out there. somewhere. in other words, move to Chicago ;P

NOTABLE BEAFCORE ARTISTS

harrison & parker	bembo davis	world4jack
stickerpodz	dd bentl	jpegcrust
bea jumpup	beatrice cook	sonjira
pepsipurgatory	spitz	ian v

PROTO BEAFCORE ARTISTS

many of these artists make works within the well established style of Fan Mutation, and to a certain extent Beafcore can also be referred to as Post Fan Mutation.

pilotredsun	cboyardee	ryan trecartin
randypeters1	jooyoung choi	seinfeldspitstain