Tomorrow's cartoons on sale in Toulouse It is one of the animation industry's most important funding opportunities. Hundreds of industry professionals from all over the world have been meeting at the Cartoon Forum in the French city of Toulouse, an event which attracted 250 buyers and investors with a combined budget of 100 million euros. The handpicked projects were pitched to broadcasting giants including Disney and Dreamworks. The emergence of smart phones, tablets and the internet has radically changed the market for animation film-makers. "The big change in the animation movie and TV series market is that before, producers had to present an animation project aimed at broadcasters, whereas today, they're aiming at a global market, which means an animation series should also offer all the cross-media products including the digital elements that go with cross-media, so they are having to rethink their strategy," said Cartoon Forum General Director Marc Vandeweyer. Today the video games market is in full expansion - video games and animation film producers are increasingly working together. Those two worlds are not that far apart because they use the same technology, they are similar-sized companies, they have similar technical problems and creative problems. But they don't have the same mentality or market approach so what we are trying to do is bring those two worlds closer together, and we're gradually getting there, so what you see now is a growing number of animation series that have their own video game," says Marc Vandeweyer. Sixty-eight projects were presented at the Cartoon Forum. The three-day event ended with a ceremony to reward broadcasters, investors and distributors that have contributed to the development of TV animation. More about: Animation film, France, Television