Successful Conclusion to the 12th Animation Production Day
Skwigly
Stuttgart – the 12th Animation Production Day ended yesterday evening with the Trickstar Professional Awards Gala. During the last two days, 170 participants from 26 countries have been discussing new animation projects in the co-production and financing market. APD is the most important business platform for animation projects in Germany and takes place every year as part of the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film and the FMX – Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Immersive Media.
This year, 48 highly promising projects with a total production value of around 170 million Euros were selected by the jury from a total of 71 applications to participate in APD. In over 700 pre-planned one-to-one meetings during the past two days, the 170 participating producers, studios, world sales agents, representatives from broadcasters, funders and investors discussed the new material. The range of projects extended from TV series, films and games for children to comedy and science fiction for teenage and adult audiences. Alongside the German TV channels ZDF, KiKA, SWR, HR, Super RTL, Disney and Nickelodeon, numerous big European and international broadcasters were present including the BBC, Canal+, France Télévisions, Turner and DHX. Streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and the toy company Mattel were also popular meeting partners. Over 300 people attended this year’s APD Conference which was held in the Rotunda of Stuttgart’s L-Bank on Thursday afternoon and was also open to FMX and ITFS industry guests.
APD has developed into one of the important dates in the European animation calendar. I am especially glad that the submitted projects displayed such a large diversity of content and form and that up-and-coming talents were able to provide new impetus. – Prof. Andreas Hykade, FMX Conference Chair and co-organiser of APD
I’m delighted that APD has once again been such a successful event and that new players in the animation industry such as Playmobil and Mattel have been part of it. This shows that animation is now extending far beyond the traditional areas of cinema and television and new business models are being created! – Prof. Ulrich Wegenast, Managing Director, Programme, ITFS and co-organiser of APD
It was once again wonderful to see that, alongside the very concrete negotiations about financing, all the APD participants used this special opportunity to network with the players in the international animation scene and to inspire each other in exchanges about the current artistic and economic challenges and opportunities in all the many aspects of animation. – Dieter Krauß, Managing Director, Organisation and Finance, ITFS and co-organiser of APD
Awards Ceremony as the Grand Finale
A special highlight drew the APD programme to a close: the Trickstar Professional Awards Gala of the animation festival. This year, as part of the gala, ITFS brought together all the business-orientated award presentations in a single ceremony, thus creating a top-class networking event where producers, filmmakers, writers, young talents and many of the industry’s decision-makers could meet and enter into conversation.
In its second year, the Trickstar Business Award went to Studio Pupil’s Tünde Vollenbroek who, with her project “House of Broken Hearts”, had already been selected for the APD’s Young Talent programme. The Tricks for Kids national series prize was awarded to “Animanimals – Sloth” by Julia Ocker; the Tricks for Kids international series prize to “Hey Duggee – The Tadpole Badge” by Grant Orchard. “Migros – Finn” won the Animated Com Award International. The German Animation Screenplay Award went to the screenplay for “Peterchens Mondfahrt” by Ali Samadi Ahadi and Arne Nolting. This year also saw the inauguration of the Germany’s Next Animation Talent award: Jens Opatz and Pia Auteried are the happy winners with their project “The Snollies”.
As part of the co-operation with CARTOON, European Association of Animation, once again this year three German producers will have the chance to pitch their series projects at the CARTOON Forum in Toulouse in September. The three prize winners are: “Digedags – The Knight Runkel Series” (Mar Vista Media), “RuneMasters” (bigchild) and “The Orbiteers” (Wolkenlenker).
The 2019 Animation Production Day will take place on 2nd and 3rd May 2019.