Oct 16, 2018

Six Promising European Animation Projects from Cartoon Forum

Cartoon Brew selected six of the nearly 80 projects pitched at the 29th Cartoon Forum (Europe's leading co-production platform for animated television and new media projects) recently held in Toulouse, France.

For three of the projects, you can also watch exclusive teaser debuts on this site.

Here are the projects and what caught our eye about each:

What it's about This full CG children's animated series based on the novel by Mary Norton, best known for Ghibli's The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) ( 52 x 11') was conceived by Blue Spirit, the French company that produced "My Life As A Zucchini. "Ten years old and only the size of an apple, Arrietty lives with her family in a hotel switchboard. Until one of them, a boy named Tom, saves Arrietty's life...

Why it's special: The pitch, the most well-attended of Cartoon Forum's three-day event, showed great promise. The teaser trailer, released today exclusively on Cartoon Brew, shows off the attention to detail and some very nice cinematography and lighting. The camera is very mobile as it follows the renters through a beautiful maze of hotels.

What it is: This "children's" comic series, organized by Gangpol und Mit, a French duet that creates shows mixing animation and electronic music, is a huge building GloboZone, where two employees relieve boredom by playing music with instruments, objects and animals. The 3D series is rendered in real time in Unity, making it easy to develop cross-media content. The Franco-German channel Arte has currently ordered 10 two-minute-long episodes for its website, but Umanimation, the producer of Globozone, intends to produce more.

Why it's special: With its attractive pixel-art look, Globozone could be a funny comedy about so-called technological advances. Each episode will be a VR version available on Facebook and Snapchat.

What it is: A proposal by Kazak Productions, a French company that produces good quality animated shorts (Gabriel Harel's "Yul and the Snake" and more recently Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo's "Make It Soul") This is a series for adults and teenagers that mixes 2D computer and drawing. In Clamville, a hyperconnected city at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, anthropomorphic fish are obsessed with "shell phones". They post their "selfishness" on SashiMe, order food on Squidora, and date on Fishook; in each of the 30 two-and-a-half-minute episodes, one of the four protagonists faces the problems of undersea virtual life.

Why it's special: Set in an undersea Tokyo-like city, "Selfish" could be an interesting satire on our connected lives and our dependence on social networks. The pitch received a great response in Toulouse. Cazac is already in discussions with France Télévisions for the French market and (unusually for a French animated series) Netflix for the American market.

What it's about A family stop-motion special (26 min.) about an anxious teenager who is so distressed by his parents' divorce that he faints in a panic attack. Upon awakening, he begins to transform into a tree. Three strange creatures he meets explain that this is what happens to people who cannot express their feelings. Produced by Hungary's Filmfabriq and Vivement Lundi, co-producers Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels of France.

Why It's Special: Noah's Tree is inspired by the personal life of Peter Vatz, a Hungarian animator who has directed some amazing shorts like The Hare and the Deer (2013), a mix of stop-motion and 2D hand-drawn animation. My Life As A Zucchini is one of the references for Noah's Tree, whose story is as dark and delicately animated as a Swiss feature film.

What it's about Three-time Academy Award-nominated Irish studio Cartoon Saloon ("The Secret of Kells," "Song of the Sea," "The Breadwinner") produced this series for preschoolers (ages 4-5). The 52 11-minute episodes (including a 2-minute song) depict how these perfect days sometimes go a little awry. The series uses digital 2D animation and a lot of slapstick humor.

Why it's special: Based on an idea from Cartoon Saloon's Spanish associate producer Nuria González Blanco, this project is very simple, but filled with the joy of a child on a sunny day at sea. With its tangy colors, rounded graphic design, and jumping children, "Silly Sundays" is very endearing.

Who they are Normaal, the French company that created the series of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts," and the Canadian PVP Group have created a preschooler with characters inspired by Anna Flachoubek's hand-knitted creations on her website, Mochimochi Land (ages 4-5). The main characters, dwarfs, can change gender by changing their hats; in 78 seven-minute episodes, they must fulfill a mission given to them by two children who speak in a voiceover.

Why it's special: It is very rare for a series to have characters, animals, sets, and props all hand-knitted. The teaser shown during the hilarious pitch (with the producer disguised as a character) was very imaginative, cute, and funny.