Last week, a slew of young talents in the field of European animation headed for Cartoon Springboard 2020, an event intended for the showcasing of projects. In total, it brought together 22 new titles, which were presented to industry experts in order to give them a boost and facilitate their access to the audiovisual market. France, Spain and Italy were the best-represented countries, and the selection included projects by students, as well as works by recent graduates and by students in their final year of studies.

Organised by CARTOON (an international association headquartered in Brussels, which coordinates the Cartoon Master training seminars in addition to Cartoon Forum and Cartoon Movie, co-production forums for animated series and features, respectively), the activity was scheduled to take place in Valencia from 27-29 October, but it ended up moving online owing to the global health situation.

Cartoon Springboard 2020 was supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe MEDIA programme, the Valencian regional government, the Valencian Cultural Institute and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. It has established itself as an unmissable gathering for producers in search of projects or those interested in discovering new talents. The event is considered a preparatory step on the way to taking part in Cartoon Forum and Cartoon Movie.

The selection included four Spanish titles: the three TV series Kubrick and Paramecium by Almudena Sancho, The Mystery of Cucut City by Héctor Arnau and Viaje al Antártico by Eva Pérez Misa, plus the feature Pepino, el acordeonista by Alfonso Casado Diez and Daniel Hidalgo. Other projects came from Germany (the series Back to Nature by Ana Maria Angel and the web series Jellypimple by Tao Zhang), Denmark (the series Space Ham by Nicolai Vielwerth and Lise Saxstrup), Estonia (the series Elementaria by Polina Minaeva), France (the series Agent B. and Spy D. by Ninar Al Himdani, The Blue Weddings by Samia Dzaïr, and What It Takes by Fabien Corre and Kelsi Phung), the Netherlands (the series Brimstone by Kevin Hemelaar, Coen Balkestein and Dara Dharmaperwira), Hungary (the web series Urban bourbon by Zsófia Csánki), Ireland (the series Astrocatastrophe by Claire McLoughlin), Italy (the feature Rossoman by Giacomo Rinaldi, Gabriele Del Vecchio, Giuseppe De Donato and Gianluca Vitali, and the series Fortune/Misfortune by Marco Bambina, Elisa Bindi and Alessandro Fogu), the UK (the series Headless Mike by Natasza Cetner and Jericho by Sarah Andrews and Aaron Hopwood) and Serbia (Disbalance by Vuk Vulicevic).

Over half of them were conceived for a youth/adult audience, which has been a growing trend in European animation recently. Also among the selection were a number of projects for children, family audiences, preschoolers and teenagers. As for the formats, TV series by far outnumbered web series and features (17, three and two, respectively).