Seven animation and web cartoon projects are awarded for global market potential at 18th annual cartoon and animation conference and market.
‘Lost & Found,’ directed by Andrew Goldsmith and Bradley Slabe.
Wabi Sabi Studio’s Lost & Found and Jung-hyun Kim’s Where’s PADO! each took home $15,000 grand prizes last Thursday at the 18th annual Seoul Promotion Plan animation and cartoon competition. Billed as Asia’s largest animation and webtoon B2B market, SPP brought together over 400 content-related companies for three days of one-to-one business matching meetings, presentations and networking sessions last week at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza.
As part of the conference, SPP hosts an animation and comic competition, where a jury of industry professionals judges a selection of animation and webtoon projects. This year’s animation competition, open to new projects either in the planning or production stage, was aimed at discovering IP with a high potential for global market success. The top 20 finalists pitched their projects to a jury of international professionals as well as an audience of SPP attendees. Winners of each category (Grand Prize / Best Planning / Best Creativity) received a cash prize ($15,000 / $10,000 / $10,000) as well as promotional opportunities. In addition, Cartoon Network presented a Most Artistic award, which included:
- Guidelines on animation development process by international broadcaster
- Review of materials and consultation on various stages of animation development
- 2 rounds of consultation on each stage
This year’s panel of judges included:
Larry Huber (Animotion Works Inc / CEO)
Aram Yacoubian (Netflix / Manager of Contents Acquisition)
Ollie Green (Turner / Vice President, Animated Production)
Nam Sun-Suk (EBS / Director of Children’s Programs)
Noh Jae-seung (Daekyo Investment / Director)
The winners are:
Grand Prize: Lost & Found (Wabi Sabi Studios / Australia)
Best Planning: Big Five (Taktoon Enterprise / South Korea)
Best Creativity: Royals Next Door (Pikkukala / Finland)
Cartoon Network’s Most Artistic: Go East! (COSCOI / South Korea)
Directed by Andrew Goldsmith and Bradley Slabe, Lost & Found is a 7-minute stop-motion short about a knitted toy dinosaur that must completely unravel itself to save the love of its life.
Animation project competition winners and judges.
The SPP Webtoon Award was aimed at finding top webtoon content, serialized either domestically in Korea or on international platforms, with high possibilities for IP exploitation. The top 10 finalists pitched their projects to a jury of international professionals as well as an audience of SPP attendees. Winners of each category (Grand Prize / Best Planning / Best Creativity) received a cash prize ($15,000 / $10,000 / $10,000) as well as promotional opportunities.
This year’s panel of judges included:
Zhang Cong (IIE STAR / Director of Comics Division)
Segawa Noboru (Kadokawa Holdings Ltd. / Editor-in-Chief)
Sun Bang (Tappy Toon / Co-founder)
Ki-yoon Kim (CJ ENM / PD)
Hyo-jin Lee (Huayi Investment / Director)
The winners are:
Grand Prize: Where's Pado! (Jung-hyun Kim / Naver Webtoon / South Korea)
Best Planning: Mudang (Jeong-hyun Seok / Toomics / South Korea)
Best Creativity: Flowar (Author Hong / Tori Comics / South Korea)
Webtoon competition winners and judges.
Source: SPP
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
