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?

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Not only do we know the startup has laid off its entire staff except for the founders (which equals 20 to 27 people depending on who you ask) because the lead investor refused to pony up more cash, but we’re also hearing stories from multiple sources who claim that the company’s management has all but thrown VC money out the windows, leading to the current unfortunate situation.

Among the allegations put forward by former employees who wish to remain anonymous: grave mismanagement, a complete disinterest from the company’s co-founders to turn MyToons into a revenue-generating business along with more serious accusations that the executives have been misrepresenting the company’s financial and operational status to their investors and moreover wasting VC money on personal purchases like trips to Hawaii, fancy dinners with relatives, home electronics for personal use and so on. We realize this could be simply a case of disgruntled ex-employees looking to discredit their former employers, but we currently consider the tips to be as reliable as they are detailed.

We tried calling the MyToons office for more information but nobody is answering the phone, apparently because the receptionist has been let go and there’s simply no one to handle inbound calls at the moment. We have e-mails in with all 3 co-founders of MyToons to get their side of the story.

The San Antonio Express-News has also picked up the news and apparently already got in touch with MyToons CEO Dan Kraus today. He blames the economy for the startup’s ill fate but says the company is still operational and planning new service features. Kraus reportedly claimed that any allegations about mismanagement and disrespectful behavior towards employees and investors are completely unfounded, deeming the information that was received by the newspaper unreliable because it comes from—wait for it—disgruntled ex-employees.

Either way, we’re putting MyToons in the deadpool, and along with the millions of venture capital it raised from investors like The Texas Emerging Technology Fund, Barshop Ventures and Syncom Venture Partners.

How much money went into the company was never disclosed, but our sources say $6 million went down the drain.

Update: MyToons CEO Dan Kraus responds:

Given the current economic climate, MyToons, like many other companies, has reduced its staffing and is re-structuring its operations. MyToons continues to be in business, remains committed to the platform it has built and intends to pursue all opportunities for growth.

As to the other allegations of misuse of VC funds for personal purchases and trips to Hawaii, the allegations of money missing from bank accounts, and the lack of a working business model, he says, “Not true.”

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Update 6/27/08: The round is now confirmed. Additional investors include DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures and Evergreen Venture Partners

Israeli-based animation site aniBoom is about to announce a $10 million B round, a source tells us. We believe the round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, although the company won’t confirm this. An announcement is expected on Monday. The company previously raised $4.5 million in February, 2007.

AniBoom wants to be the YouTube of animation, and provides a distribution platform for professional and semi-pro animators to show their creations. It draws from the talent pool on its site to co-produce animation series with contributors, who get paid for their work. (See our review here). The site competes with MyToons. Below is CEO Uri Shinar’s Elevator Pitch recorded at the Crunchies:

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Shinar has produced quite a bit of television programming and along the way gained a hands-on appreciation for the cost, complexity and luck needed to develop and execute a financially lucrative success. This is why he sees the Web as the ideal incubator to form an animation studio driven by user contributions. On Monday, he is planning to announce an advisory board that includes John Mass (head of corporate development and new ventures at the William Morris Agency), Peter Hirshberg (chairman of Technorati), and Barbara Corday (the TV producer who created Cagney and Lacey).

Shinar is molding aniBoom with an eye towards the best that Web 2.0 has to offer when it comes to content creation, collaboration and production cost. But he wants to marry that with a more traditional pipeline for mainstream media distribution, including merchandising. I recently spent some time with Shinar, who explained to me that an animation studio such as aniBoom needs one big hit to get a snowball effect going. But these days hits can come from the most unexpected places. As he sees it, the hit aniBoom is hunting for is best exemplified by a frog, and no, it’s not Kermit…

A Goldmine Called “Crazy Frog”

The charming creature pictured at right is none other than Crazy Frog, aka, “The Annoying Thing”. Check out this video to get a taste of the frog and to hear the sound that launched an international merchandising bonanza, especially in Europe, Australia, and Japan. It is not an aniBoom animation, but it the type of content Shinar wants to help discover or produce.

When the worlds of animation, licensing, and merchandising collide, a big hit translates to big, big bucks. In this sense Crazy Frog embodies everything that aniBoom is striving for.

In 2005, the Crazy Frog franchise made over $79M through the sale of mobile ringtones alone. Now look at the cumulative merchandise sales estimates on the left and it becomes evident just how much money a single hit can generate. Do the math and ask yourself how many startups you can name that generate such sales figures? I bet many of you are scratching your heads real hard right now.

The crazy thing about crazy frog is that there was no master plan behind its making: In 1997, a Swedish teenager recorded himself impersonating a two-stroke engine and then uploaded the recording to the Web where it began spreading virally. In 2003, another Swede added the animation featuring the Crazy Frog character. A year later, a German company called Jamba! licensed both sound and animation and the phenomenon was scaled to a sensation.

Incubating a Pixar

Shinar recognizes there is no shortage of artists with the talent, creativity, tools and technology to create first-class animation. However, what these artists don’t have is industry access and the ability to scale. In essence, aniBoom has created a “digital pipeline” that bridges the gap between the need for cost-effective development and production, and a global pool of resources—to date, aniBoom has recruited a couple of thousand animators from 70+ countries. It’s this digital pipeline that allows aniBoom to find, develop, test, produce and distribute at a pace that is far faster than the traditional (offline) animation production process and at a much lower cost of course.

Take “The Race for the White House”. The series was produced by creators from the US, Bulgaria, India, Croatia and Israel, with the scriptwriting and vocal talent of Gabe Abelson who was the head monologue writer for the “Late Show with David Letterman”. Another series titled “Animal Nation” which I’ve been shown but has yet to debut, was produced by a single creator from Mexico. He pitched the idea to aniBoom which then assisted with the concept, writing and animation-to-music work. Or check out Mr Coo, a surreal video created by a 22-year-old animator from Barcelona, Spain (embedded below).

For a co-produced series, aniBoom pays creators $20-25K for a development deal and 30% revenue-share across all platforms, including television. Revenue-share for merchandising is negotiated on a case-by-case basis. In 2008, aniBoom plans no less than 20 co-produced series.

But Shinar is still looking for his first big hit. AniBoom’s website only attracts 770,000 unique visitors a month. Yet Shinar seems somewhat indifferent to his site’s lack of traction so far. Unlike your typical traffic-obsessed 2.0 CEO, Shinar is focused on increasing the value of aniBoom’s content depot, rather than its immediate ad revenue potential. Content is truly king to him and the distribution channels are just interchangeable conduits. That said, aniBoom has struck distribution deals with the likes of YouTube, Joost and Yahoo.

The history of Crazy Frog is important here because to a large degree aniBoom is attempting to morph a series of lucky accidents into a pitch-to-production methodology. Back in 1986 when Steve Jobs bought Pixar, few could foresee that it would become an animation powerhouse. On the Web, incubation periods are accelerated and it is easier to test the waters with animation shorts. If the stars line up just right, aniBoom could become a real player in animation much quicker. But first it will have to find its frog.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Here’s an oddly disturbing, yet captivating, AniBoom short called Bendito Machine:

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

It is our luck to have two excellent user generated animated video sites now live – Israel-based Aniboom and, starting today, MyToons, which just came out of private beta.

MyToons certainly has the edge over Aniboom on design and overall usability, although I found site navigation to be slow this morning. With both sites, users upload short animated films that they’ve created, or have copyright permission to use. Videos are organized by tag, user, most watched, most highly rated, etc.

I love this stuff, and I spent quite a bit of time browsing videos before choosing the one embedded above (although I’m not too sure that particular video complies with MyToon’s copyright policy).

MyToons is also trying to be family friendly, and says they’ll censor out content that would constitute a NC-17 rating in the U.S. If we’re talking about pornographic content, it will be a clear enough line. But if they start to censor out swearing and other fuzzily inappropriate content, the site will suffer.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

The site has very good user generated animated videos presented in a Flash player and embeddable in other websites. My favorite Aniboom video is embedded at the end of the post (I also used this example in our previous coverage of Aniboom).

Aniboom is neck and neck with newcoming MyToons in the race to become the “YouTube of Cartoons.” Both sites are excellent, although MyToons is still in private beta.

Update: Liz Gannes comments below to let us know that this news is weeks old. Our bad.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Jeff Pulver noted them as well a couple of weeks ago after meeting the founders. The quality of the content so far is excellent, although copyrighted material is showing up on the site already.

One of the currently highest rated films is embedded below.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors