Not that long ago, animation was largely considered, y’know… for kids. Unless you were a true aficionado of independent projects and distant international efforts, then outside of Japan (and the slow but growing reach of manga/anime into western territories) Disney and Pixar had the monopoly at the multiplex and on television it was in the purview of cheaper fare, reworked imports and shorts to make up Saturday morning escapades and tea-time tv.  Cable began to change that with niche channels like Adult Swim, however, much like comics and gaming, the years and decades slowly but inevitably pushed at the boundaries of expectations as creatives and the public asked why paintings and literature could be taken as bonafide singular art-forms, but not the areas where they combined?

In the 1980s, shaking off the reputation of popular but ‘light’ tv shows such as the 1960s’ Batman and the 1970s’ Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk, the comics industry itself began producing beautifully painted and epic, thought-provoking, socially relevant stories that would earn their place in exclusive galleries and best-seller lists – Watchmen, Kingdom Come and V for Vendetta shaped generational expectations. Table-top role playing games (RPGs), like Dungeons & Dragons rose from dark basements and secluded school corners to slowly become a global phenomenon – nowadays, what action star Henry Cavill (Superman, Mission Impossible, the upcoming Highlander remake) doesn’t know about Warcraft isn’t worth knowing. The electronic gaming industry, ever buoyed by evolving technology such as motion-capture and rendering speeds, followed suit, moving from heavily-pixelated protagonists to almost photo-realistic sequences or a stylised art that flowed across the screen.

On television, we’ve had The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad and King of the Hill proving that animation can have an adult flavour when scheduled correctly. In an age where all these genres and industries now look to each other for inspiration (books and comics to film, games to tv, tv to.