Cartoon Movie – One of the world’s foremost animation shows is taking place in Rhône-Alpes for the 4th year in a row: an opportunity to incite a cross-over of skills between animation and video-gaming professionals.
Lyon will host Cartoon Movie for the 4th time, this special forum for European animated feature films. The event gives producers the chance to present their film projects to the sector’s economic players, for new cooperative efforts to be crystallized, for financing to be structured, and for distributors to be found. Greater Lyon and the Rhône-Alpes region, viewed as one of the most dynamic places in Europe for creative content design and production, was an obvious choice for this top event involving 700 participants, 200 buyers, 90 distributors and 50 pitch sessions.
An opportunity for Imaginove's Cross Media Strategy:
Advancing a resolutely Cross-Media strategy, Imaginove has worked since the 2009 event to assist video-game companies at Cartoon Movie and help reinforce links between the animation and video-gaming sectors. This is because the video game industry is well represented in Lyon, Europe’s second city for interactive entertainment, with over 30 developers such as the Arkane, Etranges Libellules or Tanukis studios. For Imaginove, sturdy links are needed between these different image-targeted industries to address ever-changing horizons and usage upheavals.
From September 13 to 16 this cross-over of expertise was also enhanced at the recent Cartoon Forum, in Sopot, Poland, an essential rendez-vous for TV co-productions and new platforms.
This year Cartoon Forum invited 5 local video gaming studios to participate, and 3 of them answered the call: Tanukis, Kross Game, Artefacts.
This year Cartoon Forum invited 5 local video gaming studios to participate, and 3 of them answered the call: Tanukis, Kross Game, Artefacts.
Karim Galloul, manager of Kross Game, gives his feedback: "I’m a trans-media producer and the producers I met with there confirmed that in the very near future they’ll most certainly need profiles such as mine to manage projects that are more and more hybrid and taking a 360° approach."
Out of the 66 animation projects pitched at the Forum, 24 include a video game dimension for which specialized studios are needed, whether it is for game developments with traditional formats (DS) or for network- or web-based games. Thus it appears clear that the animation world is actively seeking contacts in the video game sphere.
As Karim Galloul puts it: "An event like the Cartoon Forum is a fantastic opportunity for meetings, exchanges, discussions, deliberations and connections between the video-gaming and the animation “families”, and I know this is of essence to the survival of these industries.”
For Lubdna Cecillon from Artefacts Studio: "Cartoon Forum helped us discover more about the animated series context, to envision potential bridges linking medias. She also states "This was so enriching and interesting; we met great contacts there. We’ll soon be firming-up our cross-media projects, and it’s quite true that Cartoon Forum had a real impact!
