That Forum Intro animation

Sorry, not back to regular service just yet but I was sent the link to the Cartoon Forum Intro Animation, which I really liked, and thought I'd share it. You can find a download link to it on this page.

Hope you like it! It's a Bittie Award Winner!

The Bitter Animator Cartoon Forum '08 Awards

Yes, folks, it's what I'm affectionately calling the Bitties! My Cartoon Forum '08 Awards show. No red carpet, no nominations, just all winners. Oh, and a little retrospective at the end.

So let's get straight on to the winners.

THE BITTER ANIMATOR CARTOON FORUM '08 AWARDS!

Cheatiest Trailer
Winner: The Three Robbers
Well, it was all from the movie, wasn't it? But you were here to pitch the television show.


Most Disgraceful Pitch Line
Winner: The Baba House
They describe it as "Big Brother for toddlers".


Cutest Project
Winner: Rah Rah!
Yeah, it's cute. That's a good thing.


Most Entertaining Personality
Winner: Jonathan Peel
Jonathan Peel, of Millimages, claims he's going to be a pensioner next year, but this man is a complete hellraiser. He's a veteran (or victim) of the rock and roll years.


Most Bitched-About Distributor of the Year
Winner: Entertainment Rights
What has everyone got against these guys?! Wow, talk about venom.


Most Inappropriate Project
Winner: Paper Clips and Nail Polish
The buyers here are from children's channels. You wasted a lot of money going to the Forum. There's one (or even two) like this every year.


Stuff I Drank Too Much Of
Winner: Beer
I almost died. And Oktoberfest hadn't even begun.


Accessory Of The Year
Winner: Crutches
What was with the amount of crutches and leg injuries at the Forum this year? Had to be a fashion thing.


Sexiest Female
Winner: Jules Grant, C21 Media
Yeah... she's pretty.


Sexiest Male
Winner: Richard Rowe, Cartoon Network
Is he wearing make-up? I think he is. The ladies love Richard.


Most Expensive-Looking Project
Winner: Plankton Invasion
Well, in the trailer anyway. Everyone is drawn to a trailer that looked expensive, regardless of whether it's any good or not.


Project I've Seen A Million Times Before
Winner: Little Astronaut
So many to choose from this year. So many copies and bland knock-offs. But this Little Astronaut thing looked so familiar that it came out a winner. Astro Andy would have kicked its ass.


Project That Looked Like A Children's Show But Should Have Been For Adults
Winner: Just A Thought
Real children's dialogue animated in a crude children's drawing style. Was a close contender for the previous category. But what they were talking about was love and sex. That's not a kid's show. Kids would have no interest whatsoever in it. And some parents wouldn't want them to. What were you thinking?


Laziest Trailer
Winner: Adventures of Someone and Somebody Else
I've totally forgotten the name. Seriously guys, put a bit of effort in.


Best Animation
Winner: The Cartoon Forum Intro Animation
I should have mentioned this before. Before the trailers, there was a little intro animation apparently done in Ludwigsburg by the local students. A CG 3D thing. It was really good.


Trailer of the Year
Winner: Stories About Francis
Clear winner. The moment he dropped his pants had me in stitches. Genius. Dropping pants=hilarious. It's simple.


Forum Reporting of the Year
Winner: Bitter Animator
Yep, AWN's Ron Diamond can go and shite. Kidscreen's Jocelyn Christie lost out due to her second day outfit. Not a good choice. And Jules, well, she had won a previous category and I like to spread the love. So I think I win. If you're reading this and you're connected in any way with the animation business, tell everyone you know that I totally won this category. I'm an impartial judge too. Yeah, I kicked ass.



So there you have it. I end this year's Cartoon Forum with a victory. Go me. The quality of projects this year was not high. Everyone was saying it. Actually, everything was just a little bit disappointing. The turnout wasn't great. The location was nice but the Forum area itself was sort of stuck on a big road. I drank too much and I'm glad to be home now.

I had a little something with me but didn't do great getting it around. The broadcasters tend to have this wall up - they are very obviously being inaccessible - and I'm pretty shy in general so introducing myself to them became like asking a supermodel for a date. I'd just crumble. Quite pathetic really. Not to worry. I did actually make a couple of useful contacts so who knows where they'll lead.

I hope someone, anyone, got something out of my Forum reports. I expected to do more bitching about people but there wasn't enough going on to really dig up any dirt.

Next week, it's back to our regular scheduled programming!

Oh, and if you know anyone I mentioned or who works on one of the projects, feel free to let them know they won a Bittie. It is prestigious after all.

Cartoon Forum Report #5

This one is a little late but I got here eventually. Day 3 of projects. Oh, the Cartoon D'Or wasn't as bad as I expected with very little pointless filler. That must be a conscious change because they also moved it from the last night to the second night this time. Attendance must have been dropping as people saw it for the hell it was.

That said, I still tuned out completely out of habit.

So, on to the projects.

The morning opened with the trailer for The Three Robbers. This looked lovely to me. Traditional 2D that looked like 3 Men and a Baby with thieves. They were pitching it as a television show but all of the footage came from a feature version that they had made first. I have never seen the feature but some people there who had said it was excellent.

There was some thing called The Troubadours that was a whole bunch of real live kids dancing around and the odd shot of a 3D character. Is that a cartoon? Well, I'd say no. I didn't go to the presentation. The next one wasn't all that different either - Badly Drawn Roy. Based on a short film that is actually pretty funny, it's about a cartoon boy living in the real world. So it's mostly live action. It was Irish and all seemed very, well, local. Oirish. I imagine it will play brilliantly in their home territory but I'd be iffy about the rest of the world. And, though he may be 'badly drawn', using what seemed like first year animation student studies to illustrate him didn't impress me. BBC loved it though so what do I know.

There was a trailer for a thing called Claude from Folimage that was fantastic. It was this four-eyed monster thing just waiting for toast to pop. And then it did. A very understated trailer but one that I loved and I regretted missing the presentation. But I did miss it.

Then there was that Monkey Fist. The 3D looks pretty good actually and the style is like a fleshed out Gorillaz copy. But it's several years too late. It will take at least two years to make it to air and by then, well, I'm sure we're all praying this kung fu bandwagon is dead.

But the project that totally and utterly won the Cartoon Forum for me was one called Stories About Francis by a German company called Ogglies. The trailer was genius. This is what it looks like -

It began as the most insipid derivative cack. This curly haired boy called Francis gets bullied by bullies (who else?). They call him a girl over and over. Then his friend turns up and she joins in. What a bitch! So here they are all calling him a girl. Then the moment of genius - Francis screams "I am not a girl!" and drops his pants. I spat my coffee all over the table. Those wacky Germans. I loved it. Totally won the Forum for me.

There was nothing worth mentioning in the afternoon projects. I feel sorry for those who got allocated that slot because a lot of people had already left. It's the same every year.

And that was the Cartoon Forum Ludwigsburg. 60-something projects in three days. Many more if you count all the ones sitting on the laptops of the wandering producers.

Next year, the Forum is off to Norway. That should be nice.

In the next day or so, I'll give you my Bitter Animator Cartoon Forum '08 Awards. Sure, it's just the first year of these awards but I think they'll be highly prestigious at some point.

Cartoon Forum Report #4

It was a rough morning. They don't serve the beer in glasses like that. I don't even know why I drew it that way. What the hell was I thinking?

I'm lucky to have survived the day. I was seriously ill this morning. But the result of the late night and the stupid amount of weisbier (that stuff just creeps up on you) meant I missed all the morning's trailers. Word on the cartoon street was that Squidge and the Hardnuts from Cosgrove Hall looked pretty good. The rest didn't seem to impress anyone.

I was sorry to have missed the Binmen trailer. The Forum book says it “encourages children between the ages of six and nine to think about rubbish in a fun and exciting way”. Now doesn't that just sound like genius?

But I did get to see the afternoon projects, having recovered somewhat though still rather fragile. Abercadabra from Calon is about a bunch of kids living in Wales who perform magic tricks as part of their daily lives. Not supernatural rubbish (fun and exciting?). The Paul Daniels kind. The trailer looked a bit, well, plain. It was animated in Flash but the designs were clearly meant to be animated traditionally and that let it down a bit. Ordinarily, I would have dismissed a project on that.

But you see Robin Lyons, from Calon, does such an entertaining pitch every time that I couldn't miss it. And he didn't disappoint. He wowed us all with magic tricks and comedy for half an hour, and Robin is a very funny man. But... he told us nothing about the show that we didn't see in the trailer. He had nothing more to show. But people loved the pitch and went away thinking they loved the show because Robin is just that entertaining.

Paul Daniels indeed.

Aside from that, there was one that looked a bit interested called Myo & Ga from Imira Entertainment. Very cool CG 3D thing that had very simple but striking designs and it just came together to look exciting. I think they may need a bit of help actually turning it into a show though. At the moment, it's a cool visual piece and I didn't feel convinced they could sustain much longer than what they showed. Could turn out to be great though. The trailer looked a lot better than the image below would suggest.

And the rest... was utter drivel. Oh, no, that's not true. There was one called Rintje that was quite bizarre. Rintje is a dog, walks like a dog on four legs and sleeps in a basket. His mother is also a dog but wears a dress and acts like a person. Weird. But something attracted me to it. I didn't go to the presentation though so can't really tell you more than that.

Today there was a tour of the Mercedez Benz museum. I'm not much of a car man, but I thought it was excellent. The building is amazing – like something out of a James Bond movie. And it had loads of classic cars. I never realised just how large those early cars were. This was nice -

Aside from that it was business as usual at the forum. Producers with laptops. Lots of people expressing interest in shows they will never buy. Cartoon Network and Nick buyers stuck together becoming a single entity. Who knows where they go at night? Can't say I blame them - producers probably latch on and don't let go. The Cartoon D'Or ceremony is tonight, where they take 30 minutes of short films and stretch it out to a three hour borefest.

Cartoon Forum Report #3

I'm so hungover, I pray for death.

Cartoon Forum Report #2

Having a look first thing in the morning, it seemed that wrestling with Windows while setting up for presentations was the first order of business. Everyone was in quite a fluster with their Media Players and their Powerpoints.

Later in the day, it was more about people avoiding AWN's Ron Diamond, who is a staple at the forum. Ron's a nice guy and all but, well, he's not as pretty as Kidscreen Magazine's Jocelyn Christie, who now sports a short do that rather suits her. And Ron does have a tendency to just stick to you.

Bloody hell, the opening speeches dragged. They brought in the Burgermeister (very cool name) but he lost me when he started waffling on about Web 2.0. Just show the goddam trailers. Lunch was worse. Three hours for lunch?! Mostly just so they could waffle on and on and then on some more. That's nothing new in the Cartoon Forum but it's not something you can ever get used to.

So, on to today's projects. Well, I'm not at some of them (I'm here typing this) but I was at a few and saw trailers for all of them so here's what stood out -

Bamse and the Time Travel Machine - Ugh. No. You need know no more.

Paper Bag Lady - I liked the look of this. It's quirky. The trailer gave me no idea what it was about and, as I didn't go to the presentation, I still don't know but what the hell - I liked it.

Plankton Invasion - Everyone went to this. Like, everyone. Because it looked expensive. Every year there are a couple of projects that, regardless of content, look expensive. This was one of them. A CG thing that basically puts the blame for global warming, ecological disasters and all of the world's ills at the feet of... plankton. Yep, those bastards the plankton have ruined the planet for the rest of us. They claim to have quite a web presence already. The producers I mean, not the plankton themselves.

Adventures of Akiba and some other guy (can't quite remember the name) - Okay, what were you thinking? Have you been to the forum before? Or heard of it? The idea is that you show a trailer - not a storyboard. If you can't crank out 45 seconds for the forum, who is going to believe you can produce a 52 x 13' show?!

Operation Lynx - Oh dear lord, shoot me now. Horrific. Save the Endangered Specie. Yes, specie. You heard me. An awful 3D thing.

Captain Romance - Looks lovely in stills. Like a storybook in colouring pencils. Doesn't quite work as well in motion. Still, not bad.

Rah Rah - This is from the Frankenstein's Cat guys (I think) and this one is a really sweet preschool thing about a lion done in 3D. The voice of the lion is painful but, aside from that, I like this. It might be a little Pocoyo and follows a similar narrator/character thing but, what the hell, who said there was originality in animation? This is different - it's a lion. Yeah, I quite like this one.

There were a bunch more that I can't remember or were rubbish. The obligitory adult ones too that think they are shocking but aren't from people who don't realise all the buyers at the forum are from children's channels.

This evening, there is a trip to some monastery, which I may or may not go to, and then some big party thing where they'll make me drink lots of beer and miss tomorrow morning's presentations as a result. Why is it so many animation people are such beer drinkers? I don't know but the forecast is for hangovers and lots of them.

And that is the first day of projects at the forum. Hopefully, I'll have another update tomorrow at some point but can't quite say when.

Cartoon Forum Report #1

Being here with no wacom, airport and airplane doodles are the best I can do, I'm afraid.

What a crappy journey. Up way too early in the morning and this place took the whole day to get to. Seems nice enough now but I'm knackered and I'm about ready to come home.

I'm not great with airplanes.

Luckily, it didn't crash. This time.

Nothing really kicks off today except for a welcome dinner thing which I likely won't survive as I'm far too tired. I may bail and just go to bed so I'm fresh for the morning. Or as fresh as I am capable of being, which isn't all that fresh.

Having a flick through the Forum book of projects, there are a few interesting ones, a few that look like nice short films but will never make a show and a few that leave me wondering what the hell they were possibly thinking. Plenty of projects that look like loads of other projects.

Monkey Fist? Do we really need another kung fu animal, Dandy Productions? Do we really?

Quite a lot of 3D but nowhere near as many Flash-looking projects as I would have predicted. And not all that many monkeys.

Off to the Forum tomorrow

I'm not 100% sure I'll have easy internet access but, if I do, I'll fill you all in on what's going on at the Cartoon Forum. Live reporting! I should have access. I mean hotels these days should have it, right? If I don't, well, it could be pretty dead here over the next few days but I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

What I expect to see are a whole bunch of projects in their very early stages. Some will get off the ground and make it to television in a few years. Others will never be heard of again. At previous forums I saw Code Lyoko (would have put money on that not making it to television based on the presentation), Yoko! Jakamoto! Toto! (looked good but needed a name change), Aardman's Chop Socky Chooks (cynical cash-in that was guaranteed to make it to air simply because it has Aardman behind it), Charlie & Lola, Skunk-Fu and a whole lot more that I can't remember now.

Each year, seemingly through total coincidence, there are common ideas. For example, one year the Forum was inundated with projects about child vampires. One year it was martial arts animals. This year, my guess goes to monkeys of some sort. Possibly space monkeys.

You wouldn't believe some of the cack people turn up with.

I had a dream about a plane crash last night. I hope it doesn't come true.

So I got a nice invite

The Cartoon Forum is on in September. It's held in a different country every year but basically it's a place where animation production companies across Europe show presentations of their shows and try to drum up broadcaster and distributor interest.

If I can get internet access there, I'll let you know what I've seen and what looked good or, more likely, what bored me to death. The only times I've been at the forum before, I saw a serious amount of cack. I saw some great stuff too - that never got made. I saw a presentation for an animated cookery show from Passion Pictures that looked good. I wonder what happened with that?

So, yes, if I'm still alive and don't have to drop out for some reason, I'll report from the Cartoon Forum (somewhere in Germany this year) and let you know what's going on.

Actually, it was in Germany last time I was there too - in 2001, just after the Trade Tower attack. The only radio station in English I could pick up was one for a local US Army base. They had a news story saying that the US Government had found definitive proof that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attack. I came home wondering why nobody at home seemed to be reporting this - the Army radio seemed so sure. They weren't reporting it as speculation. It was fact.

It was only years later that I realised the Army radio station was priming their troops for an attack as far back as then. They had always just been waiting for their excuse to put the invasion in motion. And they found it.

I wonder if I'll hear anything juicy from the radio stations this time...

Oh, I added a few more links I like. Check them out and tell 'em a grumpy old animator sent you.