Dropout is breaking into animation with new cartoon shorts series Toonout

We’ll be honest: It’s not the most exciting sales pitch, in so far as it doesn’t show any of the actual animation from what will apparently be a year’s worth of content, as the series launches on March 24, and then releases a new short every other Tuesday after through February 23, 2027. Key art for the show displays at least a few examples of the animation styles that viewers might get, but as to actual content, all we get are promises of variety, including “Long shorts, short shorts, weird shorts, ‘intimate’ shorts,” and more. 

Press materials from the streamer revealed a bit more detail, including the lineup of creators for the first six videos: Raj Brueggemann, Victor Courtright, Jonathon Wallach, Kay Hayes, Violaine Briat, and Matt Braly, a crew that’s rotated between shows and films like Big City Greens, Monsters At Work, Thundercats Roar, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, and more. (Braly is probably the biggest name of this initial crop, as the creator of Disney Channel series Amphibia.) 

News of the series arrives both as Dropout has pushed forward with its expanding comedy goals—the streamer  has begun producing stand-up specials from folks like Demi Adejuyigbe and Aparna Nancherla, and just announced it was licensing its first show, the cult online comedy/horror series Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared—and as online animation has proven itself as a potentially mainstream smash. (Most notably through shows like Hazbin Hotel and other bits of the wider VivziePop media empire, which have gone from YouTube sensations to being one of Prime Video’s biggest hits in the span of just a few short years.)