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EUROPE’S TOP ANIMATION PITCHING EVENT totally dedicated to transmedia projects and IPs1
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Press Release
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PRESS RELEASE November 23, 2020
EUROPEAN ANIMATION GATHERS AT CARTOON 360 TO ENVISION INNOVATIVE APPROACHES FOR THE FUTURE
CARTOON has rounded off its schedule of events for the year with the celebration of Cartoon 360, the animation pitching event for transmedia projects and IPs. Fifteen animation projects with a transmedia approach were pitched in front of a panel of 36 experts and more than 200 professionals hailing from 33 countries, including delegates from broadcasting, VoD platforms, distribution, studios, and publishing companies; as well as licensing, merchandising and games professionals, among others. Created in 2014 and staged in the French city of Lille (Hauts-deFrance) for the last three years, Cartoon 360 was held online on November 17-19, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic exceptional circumstances. This year’s line-up was made up of TV series, feature films, web series, and VR experiences. Projects for pre-school children were the most heavily represented with 40%; while works targeted at family and Young adults/adults amounted to 27% each. France and UK were the most dominant countries, with three projects each, followed by Belgium and Germany (2), while Cyprus, Finland, Italy, Romania and Spain, presented one project each. Both transmedia strategies and the development of IPs intended for different platforms and media ranging from e-publishing, apps, and mobile games, to more innovative ones such as VR experiences, immersive shows, and escape rooms, were present in this year’s line-up. The projects include adventure, comedies, drama, Sci-fi, Fantasy and film noir, among other genres, and many of them have resorted to interactive storytelling, enabling audiences to play a key role in the development of the stories. Cartoon 360’s first online edition also included keynotes on the digital market and several networking activities that made it possible for the participants to exchange ideas to improve their projects and optimise their international reach. TRANSMEDIA FOR ALL KIND OF AUDIENCE The line-up included five TV series that were previously pitched at Cartoon Forum, four of which were targeted at pre-schoolers: "Badaboo" (Belgium’s Creative Conspiracy); “Ebb and Flo” (UK’s Canning Factory); "Hey Fuzzy Yellow" (Germany’s Toon2Tango); and "The Very Hairy
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Alphabet" (Germany’s Eagle Eye). “Get Making”, a project for children developed by Cyprus’ Zedem Media, had also been presented at Cartoon Forum. Together with those TV series, another three were selected: the pre-schooler “Post Monster” (Spain’s Zeptolab); “Troll Karl and Lillan” --a family’s TV series produced by Finland’s Visible Realms)--, and the Italian “My Flatmate, the Salmon” aimed at Young adults/adults. Two of the three feature film projects are aimed at the growing Young adults/adults target: “King Wray” (Romania’s Studioset) and “LAMOOVA – Try to Get Inside” (Belgium’s Kauris Studios), while the remaining one is aimed at the family audience (Italy’s “The Lazahars – Voyage Through the Athanor”). The web series “Roger and His Humans – Season 2” (France’s Ellipsanime) and “Saving Soup” (US/UK’ Gwen Austin Studios), aimed at Young adults/adults y pre-schoolers, respectively, also made it into the line-up. The selection was rounded off with the game “Dordogne” (France’s Un Je ne Sais quoi) and the musical and immersive show “Shangri-La”, presented by France’s Umanimation (also coproducer on Dordogne project). Studios from Poland, Russia and USA participate as coproducers in some of the projects. Cartoon 360 was supported by the Creative Europe - MEDIA Programme, the Region Hauts-deFrance, the European Metropole of Lille, Pictanovo, and Noranim. Since its first edition in 2014, 157 projects were presented in the event, of which one third are in production or were already released. LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE Cartoon 360 included two case studies of successful IPs which managed to conquer international audiences with transmedia strategies: “Gigantosaurus” and “Subway Surfers”. Pierre Sissmann analysed the keys to success of "Gigantosaurus”, by the Paris-based Cyber Group Studios. After its launch as animated series, this IP expanded its brand to educational books, short form digital content, toys, and video games, among others. Sander Schwartz (Sandman Television and Films), meanwhile, analysed the successful adaptation of the mobile game “Subway Surfers” as an animated series, as its more than 2.7 billion downloads go to prove. In the round table “Beyond 2020 - A 360 Look at the Animation Business in 2021”, held on November 19, the changes the sector is undergoing due to the global pandemic were discussed taking four different angles: broadcasting, distribution, innovation in storytelling, animation & brand, and a focus on the US and Canadian markets. Committed to the future professionals in the transmedia world, Cartoon 360 also held a new edition of its Coaching Programme, an initiative involving 44 students from six schools in the French region of Hauts-de-France. In addition to learning first-hand about Cartoon 360’s way of working, the young participants received training on project pitching, development, and funding, as well as master classes on transmedia and branding issues. Cartoon 360 also acts as a showcase for Hauts de-France thriving animation industry. Many production companies such as Ankama (Roubaix), Les Films du Nord (Tourcoing), Tchack (Lille), Studio Redfrog (Lille) and Zéro de Conduite Productions (Roubaix) are based there, as well as Pictanovo, an aid fund devoted to animation, new media and storytelling. The list of experts and speakers includes Mario Dubois (BBC); Joseph Jacquet (France Télévisions); Shamik Majumdar (The Walt Disney Company - EMEA); Marc Van Den Bosch-Mprah
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(Super RTL / RTL Disney); Cristiana Buzzelli (Rainbow); Diego Ibañez Belaustegui (Planeta Junior); Eleanor Coleman (Blue Spirit Productions / Indie Sales); George Rowe (Aardman Animations); and Marie Congé (Planet Nemo By Ankama), among others. ABOUT CARTOON CARTOON is an international non-profit association based in Brussels. CARTOON’s remit is to support the animation industry by organising several types of events through the year dedicated to animation professionals including pitching events for TV series projects in development (Cartoon Forum); feature films projects in various stages (Cartoon Movie), for animated transmedia projects (Cartoon 360), and for young talents (Cartoon Springboard), as well as international seminars (Cartoon Business and Cartoon Digital).
CARTOON General Director: Annick Maes - annick.maes@cartoon-media.eu Cartoon Masters Coordinator: Julie Liamin – julie.liamin@cartoon-media.eu Cartoon 360 Content Director: Vanessa Chapman, in collaboration with Christophe Erbes and John Lomas-Bullivant. Press: Gerardo Michelin – gerardo@latindie.com
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Cineuropa - 18/11/2021
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CARTOON 2021 Cartoon 360
Cyber Group Studios’ experts uncover 360-degree brand strategies at Cartoon 360 by DAVIDE ABBATESCIANNI 18/11/2021 - Olivier Lelardoux and Andreas Carlen delved into the studio’s moves to develop brand awareness, a process that now requires the implementation of a new exposure cycle
Andreas Carlen and Olivier Lelardoux during their keynote speech
Day 1 of Lille’s Cartoon 360 (16-18 November 2021) was opened by a keynote speech entitled “From ‘Unreal’ to a Real 360 Brand Strategy for the Future”, hosted by French firm Cyber Group Studios’ senior vice-president studio and associate producer, Olivier Lelardoux, and technical director, Andreas Carlen. The talk was chaired by Christophe Erbes. In the first part, Lelardoux and Carlen explained that Cyber Group Studios currently owns studios in Paris, Roubaix, Los Angeles and will soon open two more branches. The company, a producer and distributor of animated programmes for linear broadcasters, as well as for SVoD, AVoD and social media aiming to intercept international audiences, was founded in 2005 and has over 130 employees. The group owns a huge catalogue of 1,400 hours, or 2,800 episodes, available in 30 different languages. Cyber Group Studios’ mission is twofold: to tell great stories that resonate with kids (preferably aged from three to ten) and families worldwide, and to develop the stories’ universes into a metaverse experience. Lelardoux and Carlen later mentioned Gigantosaurus as an example of a “true 360-degree brand”. A successful settings IP comprising two series, shorts, music videos and dedicated productions forCookies social media, such as
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Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, it has developed a successful licensing strategy selling products such as books, toys, T-shirts, video games and pyjamas. According to the two experts, a brand is the “promise of an emotional experience that must be reinforced every time its target audience comes in contact with any facet of it”. Therefore, to develop brand awareness, it ismenu section important to proceed through “progressive exposure of branded products acting as media, carrying the brand attributes”, amplified by advertising and promotional campaigns. The two speakers argued that current times, however, are tending to disrupt the usual “well-defined exposure cycle” adopted for years by children’s animation brands. There are multiple factors posing a challenge to such a paradigm. The main one is perhaps the reduction of children’s media consumption on traditional media. This process of fragmentation is reducing the core target markets’ exposure and making the launch of ancillary business difficult, in a context wherein the exposure on new platforms is still unable to compensate for the weakened presence of traditional media. In addition, physical retailers are facing competition from e-commerce outlets, who may find children’s IPs too risky to invest in. To overcome these challenges, Lelardoux and Carlen suggest seeking exposure “whenever and wherever children watch content today” and adopting a holistic brand-development strategy, “making up for the exposure holes to create a constantly growing awareness curve”. To do this, the brand-development budget should be defined by the programme owner on top of the investment in producing it. Moreover, it took three years to exploit the 360-degree potential of the Gigantosaurus brand, so it is essential to consider the fact that every project has its own timeline in order to achieve such a goal. Luckily enough, the metaverse and digital technologies are the right placesfor developing new exposure opportunities. For example, the studio partnered with Epic Games to create two dedicated islands in Fortnite where users can meet the characters, play some games and watch some exclusive episodes. They also touched upon the Gigantosaurus fan club, not made up of human fans, but rather other dinosaurs: “We’ve created specific characters and storytelling. Here, they talk to the camera, while in the show, they’re the heroes living their own journeys. In the club, they interact with the audience and adopt a playful approach. Because of this ‘proximity’ with the audience, we wanted [to create] something more naturalistic in terms of the animation, movements and rendering. That’s why we chose to use motion capture.” Later, Carlen explained how they developed a comprehensive 360-degree strategy and vision for a multimedia and multi-ancillary product pipeline to deliver global brands for children and family. They identified a videogame engine, Unreal, and implemented it for linear production by building an open, real-time asset production platform. Through this Unreal-native pipeline, assets can deliver singular content to multiple 360-degree exploitations in parallel, for a global 360-degree marketplace. In other words, the studio has built what Carlen defined as a “metaverse brand-development enabler”.
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Cineuropa - 19/11/2021
PRESS ARTICLES
CARTOON 2021 Cartoon 360
REPORT: Cartoon 360 2021 by DAVIDE ABBATESCIANNI 19/11/2021 - We present a rundown of some of the most interesting projects introduced at this year's Cartoon 360, which ran in Lille from 16-18 November
l-r: Carla Mooney and Josephine Lohoar-Self pitching Gunther Falls in Love
This week, the city of Lille hosted the latest edition of Cartoon 360, one of Europe's top animation pitching event for transmedia projects and IPs. Producers, writers and animators had the opportunity to pitch their 14 new projects to 20 experts repping top animation players. The sessions were moderated by Cartoon veterans Vanessa Chapman, Christophe Erbes and John Lomas-Boullivant. Here, we present an overview of some of the most interesting projects presented during this year's gathering: Adam ❤ Adventure – Andrew Cavanagh and Gary Timpson (Ireland) Animated by Kavaleer Productions and budgeted €4.7 million, this 52 x 11'0 pre-school series project follows six-year-old Adam (inspired and dubbed by real life aspiring astronaut from Cork, Adam King), his smartwheelchair Speedy, and his best friends Bubby and Zuzu, a team of adventurers with a difference! Adam is no ordinary space-explorer… Throughout the series, young Adam will help others look after their planets so that children can learn how to save our own. The Christmas special Adam Saves Christmas will already premiere on RTÉjr TV on Christmas Eve and will star Ryan Tubridy as the voice of Santa. Günter falls in love – Carla Mooney and Josephine Lohoar Self (Ireland)
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A Cardel Entertainment presentation, Günter Falls in Love is a stop motion 10x3'0 animated TV series revolving around Günter, an unwaveringly loyal, custard cream-loving, yet slightly dim family pug and his lifeless stuffed toy dog – Toy. We will follow Günter as he tries his best to remain close with Toy despite outside forces trying to pull them apart. Set in a sleepy rural English town, Günter and Toy discover hidden realms within their domestic world and often descend into imagined realities. A recent short of the same name gained a nomination for Best Animated Short at the 2021 IFTA Awards and aired on RTÉjr, RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player last year. Mitch Match – Anna Osvay and Géza M. Tóth (Hungary) With one 52x11 season ready, Hungary's KEDD is looking for new partners for its second season. A humorous minimalistic piece of animation, it focuses on a single blue-headed matchstick left in a box. The matchstick, an everyday life object, is here exploited to the fullest to evoke everyone's fantasy. The protagonist embarks on a journey in every episode and always returns to the box at the end of some very bizarre adventures. The series' pilot episodes have been selected at major international film festivals and garnered numerous awards. Howzzat! – Rene Holder (Estonia/Ireland) A co-production by Estonia's Farr Creative and Ireland's Daily Madness, this 10x22 series is set in a world recovering after a disaster called 'The Great Flood.' Surprisingly, cricket takes centre stage and becomes the world's most popular sport. However, it's not just a game, as the colonies play against each other to determine the resources each will receive. In detail, we will follow Luke and Viv, who always dreamed of playing together in the World Cricket Federation. However, when they reunite again on the cricket field after they are both selected for the United Isles' - Tidal Sharks team, things get more complicated. Pink Noise – Alvaro León Rodriguez (Spain) The crazy transmedia universe of Pink Noise is based on a 10x10 web series project aimed to intercept young adults and adult audiences' appetite. The premise is as bizarre as engaging. In a world controlled by cats, who have imposed a totalitarian government, humans must struggle to survive and avoid becoming canned food. In order to impose their iron paw of scratchers and furry balls, cats also take control of the Internet. But women will save humanity, as one of them will manage to hide in the deep web and to digitally bring back illustrious women of all periods to help her fight the cats. The series is being produced by La Mola Films. Newtons – Mark Mertens (Luxembourg) This 52x7 TV, family-oriented series project is being produced by Differdange-based studio Fabrique D'Images. Newtons follows a bunch of imaginary, tiny creatures who were responsible for Sir Isaac Newton's famous apple falling on his head. Even though nobody really knows who they are, they do exist. The Newtons are the noises that you hear in your house at night. They are the mess that happened in the kitchen when you were sure that you had tidied up. They are the reason the cat won't go into certain rooms alone. Only you don’t know this, because you have never seen them, until now. You can find the full list of selected projects here: http://www.cartoon-media.eu/cartoon-360/discover-theprojects-2021-2.htm.
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CARTOON 2021 Cartoon 360
How can 360 strategies help children (and adults) fight climate change? The experts have their say by DAVIDE ABBATESCIANNI 19/11/2021 - At Cartoon 360, four experts shared their experiences in producing impactful content and campaigns to sensitise younger audiences to the current environmental crisis
Koen Timmers and Japhet Asher during their Cartoon 360 conference
Day 2 of Lille's Cartoon 360 (16-18 November 2021) hosted a panel titled "It’s a Climate Crisis: The Ultimate 360 Challenge," chaired by Vanessa Chapman. Four experts – Japhnet Asher of the UK's Polarity Reversal, Maurice Wheeler of the UK's We Are Family, Koen Timmers of Belgium's Take Action Global and Marc Goodchild of WarnerMedia UK – shared their perspectives on the current environmental crisis and how 360 content can set the example and promote climate activism among younger audiences. In his contribution, Wheeler explained that 91% of the children living in the EMEA region are concerned about climate change, 1 in 5 had a bad dream about it, 65% feel that governments are failing in fighting the crisis and 56% believe that humanity is doomed. These worrying figures make us realise that many children are now experiencing "climate anxiety" and a feeling of hopelessness. Nevertheless, 6 million children took action in 2019, perhaps also pushed by the "Greta Thunberg effect." Some industries reacted by promoting sustainable initiatives such as recycling toys, launching new, more eco-friendly packaging materials, toy rental schemes and the removal of plastic toys from magazines and Happy Meals. Other positive examples are present in the gaming industry; Minecraft created a global warming mod wherein all players' actions have an environmental
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impact, whilst The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle (one of the franchise's add-ons) aims to educate children to green practices through gameplay dynamics. Goodchild (who attended remotely) spoke about the efforts made for the Cartoon Network Climate Champions initiative, launched in June this year. The campaign was born out of some of the research about "climate section menu anxiety" mentioned by Wheeler, and included on-air content, social media content, YouTube videos, PR work, local initiatives, a dedicated website and two prestigious partnerships with the WWF and CNN. The goal of the campaign was to inform children through characters, stories, assets and other tools, to empower them by encouraging them to speak out and be aware of their actions and enable them to take micro-actions that can have a concrete, positive impact. The campaign followed a relatable, fun, positive approach and defied any links with political activism, celebrities, global ambassadors or any language that could be distressing or scary. At the heart of the campaign, Goodchild mentioned the creation of an app helping children to be part of "a collective effort with like-minded kids across EMEA." The app launched with 100 small challenges comprising concrete eco-friendly micro-actions, further tested and voted by the children. Currently, the Climate Champions' website includes over 670,000 challenges. Timmers presented the Climate Action project, a free student-centred effort involving over 2.5 million students aged 4-21 across 135 countries. Endorsed by personalities such as Sir David Attenborough, Queen Elizabeth II and the Dalai Lama, it aims to lead to a change of behaviour through education. The programme takes six weeks in total, but it has a flexible structure and teachers can sign up and join it at all times. The activities promote the development of a range of skills and positive teachings, including critical thinking and inclusivity. At the end of his contribution, Timmers quoted a 2017 study by Mark Isham and Rachel Williams: “Cartooning engages various cognitive domains identified by Bloom's taxonomy. Students can use cartooning to analyse or critique information, to compose, tell stories and discover attitudes and ideas." In the last part of the talk, Asher highlighted how "the lines between digital, animation and real world are blurring more and more." "It’s like the conscious and the self-conscious are coming together. The tools [we have] are enabling this," he said. Even though he admitted being "nervous talking about the metaverse," he invited the audience to think beyond the limited potential of experiments such as Pokémon Go, since Niantic and other companies are developing opportunities that, for every cartoon brand, "never existed before," which may bring the much-debated process of exploiting "cartoons as positive influences" to the next level. A short discussion with questions from the audience rounded off the panel.
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CARTOON 2021 Cartoon 360
At Cartoon 360, Edouard Gaudel and Luc Verdier reveal how narrative video games can help expand your IPs by DAVIDE ABBATESCIANNI 19/11/2021 - The two experts shared their experiences on transforming Firebird and Blacksad's great stories into successful narrative video games
Luc Verdier and Édouard Gaudel during their conferences
On day 2 of Lille's Cartoon 360 (16-18 November 2021), John Lomas-Bullivant chaired a keynote titled "How narrative games bring existing IPs to a new level?" The talk saw the participation of two experts, namely Edouard Gaudel of Ludogram and Luc Verdier of Babaoo. After introducing the speakers, Lomas-Bullivant asked to define what narrative games are. Gaudel explained that these games' main focus is on the story and that they should allow players to explore its universe and modify it. The definition of narrative games is rather broad, he argued, as it may embrace a wide range of works, including experiments such as Netflix's interactive film Bandersnatch. The simplest strategy at the basis of these games is "pushing a button to make a choice," but as the genre is rapidly evolving, a number of more complex systems are emerging. It's also difficult to quantify the real market share of narrative games: "Many say their games are 'narrative,' and more and more people play them, also because they’re generally easy to play."
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Next, Gaudel started talking about Ludogram and how the idea was to gather people who didn’t come from a gaming background and to allow them to create video games easily. "That’s the reason why we started with mobile games, and we needed tools easy to use," Gaudel explained. In detail, the tool developed by Ludogram allows creators to write the game as a play, with lines, actions and short descriptions. To simplify, the tool analyses the text, looks at the available assets and translates the words into pictures. This was pa helpful for the making of Ludogram's game Firebird. The original book is more linear but since it’s the story of a road trip, the team decided to expand it and add three endings, while remaining loyal to the original universe. Speaking about the gaming experience, Gaudel added: "It takes about two hours. You’d play this game in one evening as if you'd watch a movie." Later, Verdier spoke about Babaoo's work on Blacksad. Originally a comic series created by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, and published by French publisher Dargaud Lombard, Verdier said that approaching such an established IP required much caution, while keeping in mind the main goal to "surprise fans and be accessible to new audiences." Some so-called "fan services" were obviously part of the project, and these concerned in particular the most familiar characters and iconic places from the IP. It was crucial to keep every genre component alive – crime, drama, noir, romance, the presence of a femme fatale – while brining in new themes such as the influence of advertising and the sports star system. According to Verdier, fans of such games generally demand player agency, interesting choices and IP consistency. In the last part of the talk, Lomas-Bullivant asked Verdier to touch upon the popular game mechanics of the "20 second response" often understood as "the quicker you decide, the less reasonable – and more emotional – you are." Both speakers were also asked what are the budgets normally required to transform a piece of storytelling into a video game. Gaudel answered that the figure really depends on many factors, but that Ludogram's very small projects can start from as little as €20,000 for a one-hour mobile-only game, given that the backer can provide most of the assets ready to use. A slightly larger project, perhaps available also on Switch or PC, may require €60-100,000. As opposed to the low budget figures provided by Gaudel, Verdier said that Blacksad required €2 million, but that is still considered a rather small amount compared to the very high-end narrative games projects, often ranging between $20-50 million.
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