Magma Films new animation project ‘Oops…Noah is Gone!’ drew the largest audience at this year’s Cartoon Forum Catalunya’s pitching sessions, which took place in Girona last month.
More than 750 broadcasters, producers and investors from across Europe attended the forum, which took place from the 19th-22nd September. Amongst the Irish contingent were representatives from Blueprint Pictures, A Man and Ink, Brown Bag Films, Cartoon Saloon, RTE, Monster Animation and Design, the IFB and Telegael.
This year’s Forum featured around 400 hours of content and a total budget of 216million euros, and of the 60 animated TV series presented at the event, over 20 productions have their financing secured for the short term.
Magma Films’ project "Oops... Noah is Gone!” is currently in development as a 3D feature film with the Irish Film Board, with a TV series also planned. The project will be an Irish-German co-production with Pictorian Magma Animation in Germany involved.
’Oops... Noah is Gone’ is a journey of discovery and survival for the creatures Noah left behind when missed the boat by turning up late, so these creatures have never been seen befote – allowing the writing and design team a lot of creative freedom in developing the characters.
Following the successful cinema run of ‘The Ugly Duckling and Me’, due out soon on DVD, Magma are currently in production with a new animated feature film called ‘Niko and The Way to The Stars’. This will be released at Christmas 2008.
Irish production company Jam Media’s 26x11’series ‘Rescue Wrestlers’ was also presented at the forum.
This year animation producers showed a growing interest in multi-platform content, with 15% of this year’s projects conceived to be reproduced on new technology formats and distributed on new platforms like IPTV or mobile telephony.
This year’s Cartoon d’Or was awarded to British director Luis Cook, who received the prestigious prize for his first animated short ‘The Pearce Sisters’.
This year Catalonian companies Televisió de Catalunya (TVC) and Luk Internacional were awarded Best Broadcaster and Investor-Distributor of the Year respectively, while TV Cartoons, Europe’s oldest animation studio co-founded in 1957 by George Dunning and John Coates, was selected as Best Producer of the Year.
The participants also paid homage to Spanish producer Claudio Biern Boyd with a Cartoon Tribute of Honour.
Organised by CARTOON (European Association of Animation Film) with the support of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the main partners of Cartoon Forum Catalunya were Generalitat de Catalunya - Institut Català de les Indústries Culturals (ICIC), Televisió de Catalunya (TVC) and Catalan Films & TV (CF&TV).
For further info go to www.cartoon-media.be
