Presentations for French hybrid series The Science of Botheration and Team TO’s 3D animated Joe Giant, directed by Arthur Qwak, become the two most highly-attended events in the history of the European animation marketplace.
Cartoon Forum, the pitching and co-production event for animated TV series, revealed a steady stream of European animation firmly focused on quality and creativity at the 24th edition of the gathering in Toulouse, France, which ended last week.
The three-day event enjoyed record participation by 850 professionals from the animation sector, presenting 68 European projects for series in development pitched to potential co-producers, broadcasters and investors to seek cross-border partners and speed up financial arrangements.
The professional forum underlined the ongoing leadership of France; the strength and vitality of smaller countries like Belgium, Ireland and Finland; the use of co-production to finance projects and penetrate new markets; and the increasing role of cross-media and transmedia to conquer new audiences.
French animation retained a privileged role at the forum, presenting five of the 10 projects that drew the most enthusiasm led by The Science of Botheration, a hybrid series based on an original concept by France’s Vivement Lundi!. The project was the most highly attended in the history of Cartoon Forum.
France was also involved in the event’s second-most popular series: Joe Giant, TeamTO’s 3D project directed by Arthur Qwak.
The vitality of Belgian animation was evident in projects such as Three Little Ninjas Delivery Service (Creative Conspiracy) and The Yule Log (PANIQUE!) -- a TV special from the popular series A Town Called Panic -- which held third and fourth place by attendance. Ireland’s Jam Media stood out for the Early Bird project for preschoolers, reaching the fifth position.
The Top 10 was rounded out by five series adapted from books: The Kingdom from Belgium/ France’s Dupuis, by Belgian director Benoit Feroumont; A Skeleton Story from Italy (Mad Entertainment – RAI Fiction), by The Art of Happiness director Alessandro Rak; The Badgers and the Foxes from Dargaud Media (France); The Little Medic, from WunderWerk (Germany); and Memories of Nanette, from 2 Minutes (France).
Concepts such as transmedia, crossmedia and interactive animation are becoming more and more frequent among projects seeking to conquer audiences through multiple screens. Almost half of the TV projects presented this year were also developed for other platforms. Projects such as Chamelia (Technicolor, Mercury Films), Urbance (Denis Friedman Productions) and Gigglebug (Gigglebug Ent.) gave brilliant demonstrations of these concepts, showing interactive puppets and well-developed apps.
The variety of audiences targeted by European series continued to widen, ranging from children and preschoolers, who made up the bulk of the forum, to series for young adults and adults, which surprisingly had a resounding success at the event, like Ultramort (Coupé Films), Drinking Tales (Humpty Dumpty, Sacrebleu Prod.), Urbance (Denis Friedman Productions) and Brenda’s Store (Xbo Films, anoki).
Several projects have already found financing and broadcasters at the Cartoon Forum, like Cartoon Saloon’s Puffin Rock sold to Nickelodeon and RTE, demonstrating the efficiency of the event’s formula.
For the second consecutive year, the organization of Cartoon Forum in Toulouse gave a fresh boost to animation from the Midi-Pyrénées Region and regional projects such as Oueilles (Le-Lokal Production) and Brenda’s Store (Xbo Films). In addition, a parallel festival to the forum called On Cartoon showed a selection of recent European animation films in different cinemas and public spaces throughout the city, giving the people of Toulouse a chance to live out their own passion for animation.
As in previous editions, the event served as a backdrop for the Cartoon Tributes, recognizing outstanding companies of the European animation industry. Germany’s Super RTL – RTL Disney Fernsehen and ZDF Enterprises were awarded Broadcaster of the Year and Investor/Distributor of the Year awards respectively, while Belgium’s Grid Animation won the prize for Producer of the Year. Xbo Films won the Tribute Toulouse Métropole award, aimed to highlight local animation talent.
The next edition of Cartoon Forum will take place September 23-26, 2014 in Toulouse.
Source: Cartoon Forum
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
