The trailer for the upcoming animation of the bestselling novel series Cradle, by Will Wight, produced by Jay Oliva at Lex + Otis Animation Studio has been released at last!
Cradle is an amazing fantasy series by author Will Wight that reached its conclusion with the publishing of Book 12: Waybound, in 2023. Cradle is a western interpretation of the Xianxia genre, which can be described as "Magical Martial Arts."
As shown in the trailer, Cradle follows the journey of Wei Shi Lindon as he starts a journey of growth rather than remaining the weak Unsouled that his Clan has labeled him.
Fans of Naruto, Demon Slayer, Dragon Ball, Avatar the Last Airbender and more will all find elements from the stories they love in Cradle.
Lex + Otis Animation Studio
Cradle is being animated by Jay Oliva and his studio, Lex and Otis. If you don't recognize the name, you'll probably recognize some of his past work, particularly his work with DC Animations in general and Batman in specific.
His studio is equally impressive, and released a bit of a showcase of some of their more recent work that you can see here (in addition to the Cradle teaser, you did already watch that a couple of times right?)
The Cradle animation is a passion project for Jay, who loved the books so much that he reached out to Will to make sure that he had the chance to see them brought to the screen.
The upcoming animation already has a fantastic cast announced, with more to come. The following have already been confirmed for the project.
Where/When/How Can I Watch?
Will and Jay have really put the Tease in Teaser, as we'll have to live off of replaying the trailer and reading the books for the time being. But more is to come, and announcements will continue to be made as the project continues.
For those who have not been involved in the project yet, a brief explanation to get up to speed.
When Jay reached out to Will about the possibility of animating Cradle, Will decided to personally fund this trailer that they could then take to Netflix and Amazon and the likes to pitch the show. Then, together, they asked how much further they might be able to go, and so they reached out to the fans with a Kickstarter that ended up raising 1.25 million dollars.
Animation is expensive, especially when you choose to only work with studios that treat their employees well, so Will and Jay had to be smart with the money. The upcoming animation will be released to the fans as a thank you for our support in making this a reality, but it's real strength will be in supporting Will and Jay's original plan.
The 80-90 minute animatic that has been funded will be complete in mid to late 2025. With that, the teaser trailer, and the fans reactions in hand, Will and Jay will be able to approach platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, and Apple to pitch a full Cradle Animation.
Yes, Animatic. While the trailer is fully colored and animated, the final result of the kickstarted animation will not be. Here is a sample of the style of animation we will be getting next year
This particular animatic is taken from the website of Tiger Animation, which is the South Korean studio that Lex + Otis partnered with for the Cradle Teaser and many of their other projects.
The animatic we get will be fully voice acted and scored, and the only step remaining to turn it into full animation is the funding required to send it off to Tiger Animation. Tiger Animation has an amazing portfolio as well, including Avatar the Last Airbender, Castlevania, and a large number of both Marvel and DC Animations.
The 80-90 minute animatic will be released as a standalone product and will cover the contents of the first two books of the Cradle Series, Unsouled and Soulsmith regardless of any potential contracts with distribution platforms like Netflix or Amazon.
If/When a platform picks up Cradle and decides to fund the full animation, the show will follow a fairly standard 22 minute episode format. As such the animatic will also serve as the first four episodes of season 1 of the show.
This was a creative decision made by Will and Jay as part of the adaptation process. A number of the fan-favorite characters are introduced in books two and three, and its fairly unanimous that any fan that wasn't hooked immediately, was hooked by the third book, Blackflame.
That is to say, that, while the first two books will only receive two episodes each, this will not be the pace the rest of the show follows. The total number of episodes per season is dependent on funding, but the goal is currently to take 4 season to tell the story of Cradle.
Well. Now we wait. But in the meantime, share the information about Cradle, watch the trailer, show it to your friends and family, read the books if you haven't already, check out the wonderful audiobooks narrated by Travis Baldree if you prefer listening, join us on reddit and discord to talk about things.
In addition to just exposing more people to a wonderful story, each bit of interaction with Cradle is another piece of evidence to show the streaming platforms and prove that a Cradle animation is worth the investment.