The city of Toulouse in France once more hosted the Cartoon Forum this year (17-20 September), the event dedicated to pitching sessions for animation television series. Now in its twenty-fourth edition, the Cartoon Forum seeks to help producers finalise their own projects and meet potential co-producers, financiers and distributors.

This year, 68 projects were presented and 850 professionals took part, among which 250 broadcasters. During the closing press conference, Marc Vanderweyer, general director of Cartoon, declared himself fully satisfied with this edition, characterised by the high quality of projects presented. Numbers in hand, Vandenrweyer introduced The Science of Botheration project, presented by French company Vivement Lundi !, which attracted 354 spectators, making it the most watched pitch from all the editions so far.  

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Jean-François Le Corre, Producer at Vivement Lundi ! from Cineuropa on Vimeo.

The projects to attract most attention tended to be from independent companies. Belgium and Luxemburg, two countries that have adopted a tax shelter, had a particularly good run this year, as did Ireland, which finalised the financing for two projects during the forum. Vanderweyer declared he was particularly happy for the handing out of two Cartoon Tributes to Germany (Super RTL in the television network of the year and ZDF Enterprises as best financier). The hope shared by workers from Cartoon is a step towards stopping the haemorrhage happening at the heart of the German animation industry. Belgian company Grid Animation was given the Cartoon Tribute for producer of the year.

Average duration for projects presented is expected to be 18 months, for an average cost of €10,000 a minute. The transmedia elements were particularly important and anticipated this year. Clearly, many producers have found it difficult to develop transmedia elements within their projects, while others have found it much easier. An interesting approach was that of the creators of Chamelia, presented by English company Technicolor Digital Production and by Canadian Mercury Filmworks - experimenting with an online application, which is only usable if the spectator is simultaneously watching the episode on television. This should push audiences to remain faithful to television without having to forfeit online interactivity. Another interesting example is that of Urbance, by French Denis Friedman Productions and Canadian Steambot Studios, one of the rare adult-geared projects presented during the forum. Thanks to social media know-how, Urbance has already created a buzz around it, with 8,500 fans on Facebook in just 9 months.

To conclude, Vandenrweyer announced a new initiative by Cartoon, which will enable producers to pitch transmedia extensions of their own projects. This new event should happen in March 2014 in Munich and will most probably (pending negotiation) be organised together with the Power to the Pixels team.

If you want to learn more about animation series trends, marketing and production strategies, on the evolution of content, formatting and transmedia approaches, watch the storify Cartoon Forum 2013, made by Cineuropa, where images and tweets can be found covering the Toulouse event.