AniBOOM

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AniBOOM is a cross-media animation website offering a collection of short animations and cartoon, animation tools (like ShapeShifter), and competitions [1]. Registered users can submit animated movies, which are then categorized according to type. Users are able to evaluate videos by giving them a number of “bombs” and by posting comments. AniBOOM also offers option to email the video to a friend, to post to a blog or social network profile page, or add to favorites. Users are given "BoomZones", or profile pages, in which to showcase their videos.

Unlike most video sharing websites, AniBOOM appeals primarily to professional or semi-professional animators, and offers syndication and/or production deals, either on TV or the web, for popular submissions. Non-animators can also submit ideas to the site for other animators to complete [2]. While most of content submitted is original, some of the content on AniBOOM can be found on other video sharing sites.

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[edit] Background

AniBOOM's CEO is former Israeli television executive Uri Shinar. The company was founded in 2005.

[edit] Milestones

On March 17, 2008, AniBOOM launched an animation contest with Radiohead to pick a user-generated music video for the band's newest album, In Rainbows.[3]. The contest lasts until June 30th, and voting begins June 9th [4]. Voting takes place on AniBOOM.com and MySpace. Semifinalists were chosen by an anonymous panel of judges belonging to organizations such as MySpace, Adult Swim, CAA, and Aniboom itself [5].

The winning video will be chosen by AniBOOM, Radiohead, TBD Records and Adult Swim on June 30, 2008. The winning video will be aired on Adult Swim.

[edit] Controversy

The choices of semi-finalists picked by the judges for the Radiohead music video contest was met with some vocal opposition by participants in the contest.[6] Three of the winning videos were discovered to have substantially, if not entirely, consisted of footage from previous professional projects by the video creators; one of the videos was even comprised of animation footage culled from a commercially released short film directed by the video creator. Furthermore, these and other semi-finalists were suspected of either employing large animation studios to create their submissions or had also compiled a video from pre-existing material. In addition, it was later discovered that one of the semi-finalists was Paul Beck, a professional animator who had previously made music videos for Radiohead. While these semifinalists did not directly violate the submission guidelines outlined by AniBOOM for the contest, many amateur artists felt duped by AniBOOM into hopelessly competing against animation industry professionals and into delivering technically inferior videos because of the website's heavy usage of the word "storyboard" to describe entries during the first stage of competition.

Because of the evidence that three of the semi-finalists used fully animated footage pulled from previously completed animation projects to submit as their storyboards, many of the contestants demanded that AniBOOM disqualify them. [7]

[edit] Investments

In February, 2006, Israeli venture firm Evergreen invested $4.5 million in AniBOOM. [8]

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.aniboom.com/pages/application/GeneralPages/AboutUs.aspx
  2. ^ http://www.aniboom.com/studio/create
  3. ^ Eliot Van Buskirk. "Radiohead Launches In Rainbows Video Contest", Wired, 2008-03-17. Retrieved on 2008-04-07. 
  4. ^ http://www.aniboom.com/radiohead/
  5. ^ "AniBoom Official In Rainbows Competition Statement", Aniboom.com, 2008-05-09. Retrieved on 2008-05-09. 
  6. ^ "Concern about Semifinalists", AniBoom, 2008-05-06. Retrieved on 2008-05-09. 
  7. ^ "TO THE JURY and to ANIBOOM: Please, we all think you have to disqualify Dany Saadia", AniBOOM, 2008-05-06. Retrieved on 2008-05-09. 
  8. ^ Michael Arrington. "Aniboom Raises 4.5 Million for Cartoons", Techcrunch.com, 2007-02-14. Retrieved on 2007-02-15. 

[edit] External links