"Our emphasis is the Web. We have to keep it always in mind. The animation we are doing has to load quickly, but it also has to possibly screen on television." Millimages Online develops animation for the Web, but they try to sell it for television as well. "We choose simple visual design that works also on television," Ewenczyk says.

This means that the story is the most important part: "We tell the artist that there are not big possibilities for [animation] details, he has to work on the story." Ewenczyk takes South Park as an example, "It's simple animation, but the story is strong. It would work any place."

Mike Robinson (r), a session chairperson, discusses a pitch with participants.

Web animation is done using Macromedia Flash. "It's universal, cheap and 90-95 percent of Internet-users have the Flash plug-in," says Ewenczyk. "Basically, it's the same to do animation in Flash. It's very simple. It's vector-based and much lighter than pixel-based animation. It's also easy to enlarge." This part is true! Flash animations work on screens bigger than just your computer. When screened in larger formats, Flash animations yield surprisingly good results. Plus, every episode has a maximum size of 200 - 300 kb.

However, the key question is money, which is now running away from e-businesses, after camping out for several years. "One has to adapt to this reality and know the market," thinks Ewenczyk. "We started last December, but only after we had real customers. We researched and got the customers before we started."

"The Internet is here forever, only the frenzy has stopped and the hype is over. The problem with some e-companies was that basically they just wasted money; they did programmes which were too expensive and didn't earn the money back."

Millimages Online does not start a project before they have at least one buyer. France Telecom was involved in their two previous projects. "But we do not need 100 percent of our financing beforehand either, because the financial risk is so small. We can do the serial though 40 percent is missing. This is not possible with a seven million euro TV series." The budget for all Millimages Online series is around 110,000 euro, one third of the price for a similar TV animation.

Serge Ewenczyk doesn't see the global nature of the Internet as a problem when it comes to selling Web animation. "Internet users are looking at national pages. French people do not read German pages. The content and language make the difference, though pages in English are an exception." He believes that even when a series is already on French Web pages, it doesn't make it an obstacle to sell elsewhere.

The next Cartoon Forum will take place in Wales in the city of Eriry, the Welsh name for Snowdonia, September 18 — 22, 2002. But before that, the European animation industry will gather to pitch feature animations in Potsdam, near Berlin in Germany, March 14 - 17, 2002.

Heikki Jokinen is a freelance journalist based in Helsinki, Finland and specializing in short film, animation, documentary film and comics. He is also a board member of ASIFA International and president of the Finnish Association of Art Critics. Heikki has participated in every Cartoon Forum since 1993.