COMEDIANS AND COMEDY CREATORS ASKED TO SUBMIT CONTENT TO CARTOON NETWORK

The leader in children’s animation in South Africa, Cartoon Network, invites African creators to submit their short-form comedy project in the first ever Cartoon Network creative venture run in Africa.

If there’s one thing Africans do really well, it is the ability to laugh at themselves! Taking advantage of Africans’ humorous streak, and incredible storytelling abilities, Cartoon Network Africa is proud to announce the launch of their brand new initiative, Cartoon Network Africa Creative Lab, an African venture designed to bring innovative, local short form content to the channel, and its digital platforms, while reinforcing the local relevance of the brand.

In this ground-breaking move, the leading network in the kids’ entertainment industry, Cartoon Network is taking another bold step in addressing the gap in locally relevant content which offers a viewing experience that resonates with its African audience.

The initiative will encourage African talents: creators, writers, graphic artists, animation students in fact anyone who loves kids’ content, to explore their creative, animation and production talents and have the chance to produce a short-form animated comedy to make Cartoon Network viewers across Africa laugh out loud!

“As sponsors of the Discop 2016 Animation Pitching Programme, we were exposed to some really inspiring local animation projects,” says Ariane Suveg, Head of programming and acquisition Turner kids Africa.

“We were so impressed by Cape Town-based Punch Monkey Studio’s amazing creative energy in the winning entry, Cloud Life, that the project has been traveling through the Turner group and is now in a development process with the Turner Asia Pacific production team! This just reinforces our need to invest in local content and our commitment to further mentoring talent in the African animation industry.”

Entries for the Cartoon Network Africa Creative Lab will be open from June 7 until August 31 2018 across the continent. African residents, aged 18 and over, or any African-based company, can submit their one-minute to three-minute creative short project which must be in the genre of comedy and fit with Cartoon Network’s values of funny, random, irreverent, smart and contemporary humour.

Ten projects will be short-listed in September, and the local creators will get the opportunity to pitch their work to Cartoon Network Africa’s content programming team. The winner and two runners-up will then be revealed at DISCOP Johannesburg at the end of the year.

The winner and runners-up will be given the opportunity to get their project produced as a pilot with Cartoon Network Africa which will then premiere on Cartoon Network Africa and its digital platforms in 2019.

Editorial guidelines

Format:                      Short animated film (1 minute to 3 minutes long)

Target:                       6 to 12-year-olds (core target: boys 7 to 10-years-old)

Language:                 English or non-dialogues

Genre:                       Comedy

Goal:                          Make African kids laugh out loud!

Ingredients:              Fresh new style

All kinds of humour, including irreverence and randomness, Comedy driven by engaging characters and unexpected stories Positive values such as kids spirit, kindness, diversity and never-ending imagination Unique graphism based on any animation technics (2D, 3D, stop motion, mixing real footage etc)

Requested material

Concept presentation:         Pitch, heroes’ description, storyline(s), graphic intention

Any additional material accepted (including story-boards, animatics, videos etc)

 Submission process

Submissions to be sent via Dropbox to www. CartoonNetworkAfrica.com/CreativeLab

 Timeline

Call for entry:                        June 7th to August 31th 2018

Winner and runners-up selection announcement: November 2018 at Discop Johannesburg

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