"Animals are always made human for movies," says director Philippe Leclerc of Praxinos. "I began to think that they have to have some other kind of life behind the screen, too."

Visually Teddy's Coming Out is made in the now trendy '60s style, with a touch of Tex Avery and Tom of Finland. The backgrounds are simple but effective and colourful. The total budget is only around 6 million Euro or USD. Producer Jean-Paul Caspari says that a big slice of the budget is slated for music. The film will be full of gay cult music, like Doris Day, Gloria Gaynor, Marlene Dietrich, The Village People, and of course, Elvis Presley and Judy Garland.

Director Philippe Leclerc believes that the film will find its audience, as did films like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. "We do not look to provoke, we want to make a comedy and talk about tolerance," he underlines. "This is not only a gay movie," he adds. This is easy to believe, as the plot sounds truly funny and innovative.

(Left to right) Violette and Jacques Vercruyssen, directors of Odec Kid Cartoon, Belgium. Courtesy of Cartoon.

A more mainstream, but most interesting project, is Loisel's Peter Pan by German company Trixter and director Michael Coldewey. Frenchman Regis Loisel is one of the best European comics artists today and he has been working on his five album story Peter Pan for several years. It is loosely based on the well-known book but interpreted in Loisel's sensitive and intelligent manner. The fifth album will be published soon.

Coldewey says he became a fan of Loisel four years ago upon seeing the albums in Paris. "His drawings look like traditional animation, but his way of telling the story is different," Coldewey says. Trixter bought the rights in February and is just beginning the work. In March they didn't yet have a pilot.

Trixter is a German company, based in Munich that specializes in character development and design. They are a strong CGI producer as well. Trixter works together with another German company, Das Werk, that at the moment might well be the biggest European post-production company.

"Now that we have strong support from Das Werk we can start Peter Pan," Coldewey says. Trixter has just finished another feature animation Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2, a Canadian-German-South Korean film directed by Coldewey and Michael Lemire. It will have its German premiere in May.

"Though Trixter is strong in 3D animation, we will do this in 2D," says producer Lilian Klages. "We try to keep the work in Europe and quality high. At the moment we are discussing cooperation with a Spanish company."

The main lobby is the area where most of the event took place. Courtesy of Cartoon.

Sounds nice but a cold shower follows. After showing the video with Loisel's images, Coldewey says first of all, of course, that Peter's bad teeth will be redrawn. The reason soon becomes clear: Trixter wants to sell the film to the U.S. market and one cannot have an animated character with bad teeth there -- not even in a film that tells about an extremely poor and neglected slum child of London's East End in the 1880s. Goodbye Dickens and historical facts, hello sleek entertainment with modern dental care.

The paradox is that Loisel didn't want to sell his story’s rights to the big U.S. animation company that was interested. He wanted to keep it in European hands. Now the European producer seems to be writing a story that is fit for U.S. cinemas; for a country where practically no foreign films are screened.

"We are currently rewriting the story for family entertainment. We do not use all the parts of the albums," director Coldewey says. According to my judgement, they aim to cut the "sex and nudity" away. The story includes very little of these banned things and they are an integral part. One of the main lines of the original story is the robbing away of childhood with structural and physical violence. Another is the sexual awakening of a young boy. All this Loisel tells with a sensitive style, filled with innocence and understanding.

Coldewey says that Loisel is following the developments and has accepted the changes. "He knows the process and understands that making a film is different than making an album and needs a wider audience."

Loisel was involved with the development of Disney's Tarzan. He was one of the artists figuring out how Tarzan would look. Finally Disney only used the dreadlocks-type hairstyle from his drawings, though they were afraid it would look untidy. Loisel reminded them that Tarzan lives in a jungle with apes; he cannot look as if just walking out of a barbershop.