Pitching new projects and getting business done continues in the lobby.

It is a completely crazy film. Horse prepares a cake, but Cowboy and Indian try to steal it from the fridge. At the same time a bear is trying to get into their house. The fascination of the film lies in the clash between children's imaginative play and adult humour. The use of plastic toy figures with their stiff movements remind us of our childhood, but the contrasting adult dialogue just leads to absolute absurd hilarity.

The producers were seeking the missing 340,000 euro of their total budget of 880,000 euro. Judging the response from the TV channels this might happen. The pitch was attended by 94 Forum participants, including 34 persons from TV channels and 25 other investors. Paniques' per minute price of 11,000 euro is around the average price of the productions presented at Cartoon Forum. Usually 26-part 26-minute series are created with a budget around seven million euro, which is 10,000 — 13,000 euro/minute.

One of the major projects presented was Arabian Nights, a 26 x 22 minute series produced by Germany's Hahn Film. According to the producers it is based on the untold stories of The Tales of 1001 Nights. Sherazad, "a modern teenage girl, witty and brave, a role model," meets a lot of heroes and villains and has a small ghost to help her. Along the way, humour is not forgotten. For instance, there is a man who has something better than the usual flying carpet -- a flying sofa!

Visually the series is well done. The Arabian-style backgrounds are combined with good quality character animation. Hahn Film has a branch in Saigon, where part of the work is done. The series is expected to be done in roughly 20 months; seeking the finance will take until the end of the year and production 18 months, "plus the usual two month delay," one of the presenters realistically added.

President Serge Ewenczyk from Millimages Online (l) being interviewed by your humble writer, Heikki Jokinen.

Windows For The Web
WebWindoW is a Cartoon Forum special section, which gives pitching opportunities to Web animation. It started at last year's Cartoon Forum. This year it included eight projects. Many of these were Web productions to support existing TV series -- part of the package -- but now France's Millimages Online's Gotchaaa is a project done primarily for the Internet.

The concept is simple: each of the 31 Webisodes includes two 30-second black humor stories where "shit happens" to some of the characters. Every story has different characters and surroundings. This kind of animation is somewhere in between daily comic strips and television; it has to be sharp, short and reach the punch line with very few images.

President Serge Ewenczyk from Millimages Online says that because his company is part of larger animation producer Millimages, they do not have to do TV programmes. "Our task is to develop new concepts," he explains.