Fox Television, the proud home of The Simpsons and Family Guy, is looking for another cartoon franchise to add to its roster. But rather than searching in Hollywood, it is crowdsourcing cartoon ideas on the Web. In a contest hosted on animation site Aniboom, professional and amateur animators alike will be able to submit a two- to four-minute animated video online for a chance at cash prizes and a shot at producing a full-length pilot for TV.
The contest starts on May 27. Fox is looking for holiday-themed ideas (anything from Halloween to Christmas). Fox executives will pick four finalists, and the Aniboom audience will pick a fifth. A Fox development deal is not guaranteed, but Fox hopes to find new talent it can showcase on TV.
Aniboom is becoming a strong community for animators. If the contest produces something which ends up on TV, you can expect to see more like this one in the future. But instead of just using Aniboom for what amounts to nothing more than online auditions, Fox should start thinking about how to make its next cartoon franchise truly live online as well as on the Web. I am not sure what that means, but Fox is not even asking for animators to submit videos or concepts with online components. Maybe Fox should launch the series online first before it takes it to TV. That seems to be a popular emerging TV development model these days (see Blah Girls).
If you were developing the next Simpsons for both the Web and TV, what would look like?
Did you guys see http://www.twibeo.com launched today. Really cool site, it is a microblogging site that lets you share photos and videos with your updates. Check it out: http://www.twibeo.com
SPAM
stop pimping your site
They must be running out of ideas.
They plunge into communities’ pockets for a new idea, simply because they think they would get an idea that will be supported by an audience on the ground–from the bottom up.
i actually think it’s kinda clever. there’s plenty of quick-witted people on the internet. heh.
I love how these major media companies are reaching out to the potential talent of their audiences. Didn’t FX do something similar a few years back? I think it was right before “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” aired its pilot.
Twibeo? Wow…wasn’t there an article on here that went over how Rejaw just went under? Looks like somebody went to Twitter and copied and pasted the page, took off the bird and put on an owl.
Yeah Micheal, it was a tv show called ‘Starved,’ and it was one of the funniest shows I had seen. Mostly a dark comedy about people with eating disorders. I still don’t know why they pulled the plug so quickly on it, it was really great.
The economics just aren’t there for a studio like FOX to launch web series. Shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons cost around a million per episode, and there’s just no way to recoup that type of investment yet. Blah Girls, however, is a great example of a web series – it’s short and super simple. A series like that will cost between $5K and $20K per episode. That’s a budget you can recoup on the web.
I don’t understand why they don’t make THIS into a “reality show”. I would watch a competition of animators. Imagine viewers calling in to vote for their favorites each week. Sure they wold have to already have between 4-6 shorts “in the can”, but it would make a better show than American Idol and might help them find several great new shows.
That’s a great initiative! Aniboom has a great creative potential but lacks in the production as it’s all user-generated. We’ll probably get to see productionsof higher quality on the web than flash animated stuff.
A different example with good animations geared for the web is http://loko.tv/
So who is doing this? I probably will enter something.
check out the promo video for the Fox-Aniboom Contest. Submissions start on May 27
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thanks
the Aniboom team