Speak­ers & experts

Keynote: Spa­tial Com­put­ing - The Next big thing since the Iphone! Is it being billed to become a gamechang­er for 3D animation?

Thomas Bedenk is VP Extend­ed Real­i­ty at Enda­va and free­lance advi­sor with over 25 years of expe­ri­ence in dig­i­tal pro­duc­tions. His focus areas are Strat­e­gy, XR and UX across indus­tries. He is a fre­quent speak­er at inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and found­ing mem­ber of XRBB and the Ger­man Game Asso­ci­a­tion. 2008 he found­ed game stu­dio Bright­side Games. He has degrees in Media Design and Human Fac­tors. Pri­or, he was inter­ac­tive design­er and devel­op­er for 10 years and worked on spe­cial effects for movies.

Grad­u­at­ed from Supin­fo­com Arles (now MoPA) in 2011 with the short ​“Le Taxi­der­miste”, made with 3 friends. Since then, direct­ed sev­er­al shorts and series (“Deux oiseaux”, ​“Jesus, the sto­ry of a Word”…), cur­rent­ly in pre-pro­­duc­­tion of the fea­ture film ​“Detec­tive Kib­bles”, writ­ten by Benoît Delépine & Frédéric Felder, co-direc­t­ed with Delépine and pro­duced by La Sta­tion Animation.

Keynote: Meet the first Euro­pean stu­dio, whol­ly devot­ed to adult ani­ma­tion: Bob­byp­ills!
What Next for the inspir­ing com­pa­ny and its mis­sion to empow­er artists to shape pop cul­ture, through unique, acces­si­ble series, and inno­vate the 2D ani­ma­tion sector?

I start­ed work­ing in 2009 as an ani­ma­tor on ​“Le chat du Rab­bin”, long fea­ture film by Johan Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux. Then still as an ani­ma­tor I worked for Ubisoft (“Ray­man”), Pri­ma­lin­ea (“Red Tur­tle”), then in 2015 I came to Bob­by, Work­ing as a Direc­tor, srciptwrit­ter and sto­ry­board artist (“Mon­sieur Flap”, ​“Peep­oo­do”, ​“Dead­cells”).

Keynote: Meet the first Euro­pean stu­dio, whol­ly devot­ed to adult ani­ma­tion: Bob­byp­ills!
What Next for the inspir­ing com­pa­ny and its mis­sion to empow­er artists to shape pop cul­ture, through unique, acces­si­ble series, and inno­vate the 2D ani­ma­tion sector?

Gabrielle nav­i­gat­ed the ani­ma­tion indus­try, work­ing as devel­op­ment exec­u­tive for Medi­awan Kids & Fam­i­ly and Gau­mont before turn­ing to more indie com­pa­nies like Sacre­bleu and Stu­dio la Cachette. She joined Bob­byP­ills as devel­op­ment man­ag­er, bring­ing her cre­ative strength to bold and inno­v­a­tive projects while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly work­ing as script writer on ambi­tious con­tents such as ​“Star Wars Visions”.

Keynote: Meet the first Euro­pean stu­dio, whol­ly devot­ed to adult ani­ma­tion: Bob­byp­ills!
What Next for the inspir­ing com­pa­ny and its mis­sion to empow­er artists to shape pop cul­ture, through unique, acces­si­ble series, and inno­vate the 2D ani­ma­tion sector?

After sev­er­al years work­ing in the french cin­e­mato­graph­ic indus­try – main­ly at Black­pills as Edi­to­r­i­al Super­vi­sor – Arthur Delabays joined Bob­byp­ills as Head of Devel­ope­ment. In the stu­dio, he over­saw the devel­op­ment of most of Bob­byP­ill­s’s cre­ations, from short-for­mat series to the stu­dio’s first fea­ture film. His goal for the future of Bob­byP­ills? Pro­duc­ing orig­i­nal and ambi­tious series and fea­ture films for an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence and pres­ti­gious partners.

Keynote: How to nur­ture and men­tor the next, new tal­ents in Africa, look­ing to cre­ate and finance their own shows.

With more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the TV indus­try, Ari­ane is a con­tent and ani­ma­tion expert from pro­duc­tion, pro­gram­ming, and busi­ness devel­op­ment per­spec­tive. She has been Pro­gram­ming Direc­tor of sev­er­al chan­nels, among them Nick­elodeon and the French free-to-air Gul­li. Until 2022, she was Vice-Pres­i­dent of Kids chan­nels - France & Africa at Warn­er Bros Dis­cov­ery. In 2023, Ari­ane found­ed Celes­tine Blue, a pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to African con­tent IPs.

Keynote: Car­toon­Next high­lights ani­ma­tion excel­lence in Hungary!

Hun­gar­i­an film pro­duc­er, for­mer mem­ber of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Hun­gar­i­an Producer’s Asso­ci­a­tion and head of the Ani­ma­tion Depart­ment at the Insti­tute of The­atre and Film and cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Hun­gar­i­an Ani­ma­tion Pro­duc­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion and rep­re­sents the coun­try as the Ambas­sador at the Euro­pean Ani­ma­tion Awards. In over 25 years of expe­ri­ence, she con­tributed to 12 fea­ture films and has earned over 100 awards and nom­i­na­tions worldwide.

Kres­imir Zub­cic, an edi­tor-buy­er at Croa­t­ian TV (HRT) since 1989, delves into ani­ma­tion from 1996, man­ag­ing short and fea­ture ani­mat­ed films. Since 2015, he has been Vice pres­i­dent of the Board of Ani­mafest - World fes­ti­val of ani­mat­ed films Zagreb. At HRT, he is an edi­tor of an ani­ma­tion-focused TV pro­gram air­ing Mon­days at 21:30 on 3rd chan­nel. His glob­al pres­ence includes judg­ing at esteemed events like the Emmy Awards in the kids’ category.

With a strong legal back­ground and 3 years’ expe­ri­ence in law firms, Mirko is now close­ly work­ing with inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned audio­vi­su­al and ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. For sev­er­al years, he has been involved in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of children’s con­tent, research of new IPs and con­tract nego­ti­a­tions (with broad­cast­ers, VOD plat­forms, pro­duc­tion and local­i­sa­tion stu­dios). He rep­re­sents DeA­Plan­e­ta Kids & Fam­i­ly in the most impor­tant mar­kets and events in the industry.

Keynote: What’s Next for Epic Games, a major sup­port­er of ani­ma­tion in Europe? In a rare keynote from Epic and their UE Busi­ness Direc­tor, Ben Minall, we explore what ini­tia­tives are planned for the next gen­er­a­tion of Stu­dios and Creatives.

I began my jour­ney as a Shake com­pos­i­tor at Realise Stu­dios where I taught myself ​“Nuke “. This led me to The Foundry, to become a demo artist and helped to launch ​“Nuke­pe­dia “. I then joined ftrack as employ­ee num­ber 5. My real-time ani­ma­tion began at Cubic Motion, where I spear­head­ed the launch of ​“Per­sona “, their real-time facial track­ing solu­tion. In 2020, Epic Games added Cubic Motion to its port­fo­lio. Since then, I’ve been on the Unre­al Engine busi­ness devel­op­ment team.

Keynote: Ani­me is offi­cial­ly HUGE! Accord­ing to Japan­ese pow­er­house, Poly­gon and its recent research.

Rod­ney Uhler joined GKIDS as the Direc­tor of Spe­cial Projects before his cur­rent role as Direc­tor of Acqui­si­tions and Devel­op­ment. He over­sees the acqui­si­tions for the ani­ma­tion dis­trib­u­tor as well as GKIDS’ devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion work. He also serves as the Pro­gram­ming Direc­tor for the Ani­ma­tion is Film Fes­ti­val which is pro­duced by GKIDS, Annecy and Variety. 

Pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences involve pro­gram­ming and cura­tions for renowned muse­ums and film festivals.

Alexan­dre Cor­nu is a pro­duc­er at Films du Tam­bour de Soie, where he and his part­ner Muriel Sor­bo were award­ed the Prix du Pro­duc­teur Français 2012 by Pro­cirep. Alexan­dre also devel­ops XR pro­grammes and pro­duces ani­mat­ed fea­tures, includ­ing Alain Ughet­to’s No Dogs or Ital­ians allowed, which won a dou­ble award at Annecy last year, the EFA Award for Best Euro­pean Ani­ma­tion Film and the car­toon trib­ute of the pro­duc­er of the year 2023 award­ed at the last Car­toon Movie.

Keynote: The inno­v­a­tive, social media-dri­ven ​“Samuel” has come of age! A hit at Car­toon Forum, the emo­tive yet humor­ous depic­tion of ado­les­cence will soon be air­ing on France’s Arte, and Spain’s 3Cat and RTVE. A broad­cast­ing first for Spain!

Co-founder of the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Les Valseurs in 2013 and the ani­ma­tion stu­dio Pulp in 2023, and César win­ner in 2019, he pro­duced the ani­mat­ed shorts Wicked Girl and Guax­u­ma, award­ed in Annecy and Ottawa, and Step into the riv­er, Oscars short­list 2022. After notic­ing on social media, Emi­lie Tronche’s work, he sug­gest­ed turn­ing Samuel into a dig­i­tal and TV series, includ­ing a spe­cif­ic ver­sion for Tik­Tok. Samuel was launched last March on Arte, RTVE and 3Cat and their social channels.

Fol­low­ing a career of 25 years in TV broad­cast­ing, Chrys­tel Pon­cet launched MaG­ic C with the desire of widen­ing the scope of con­tent avail­able in ani­ma­tion. She works as cre­ative pro­duc­er with part­ners who share her vision : Andar­ta Pic­tures: ​“Ewilan’s Quest” (Fce Tv) and ​“Baïdir”/MaybeMovies: ​“Zom­bil­le­ni­um” the series/​Millimages: ​“Vir­tu­al Past” (C+) /​Tam Tam: ​“Tiki” (Fce Tv). MaG­ic C also advis­es pro­duc­ers in edi­to­r­i­al development/​financing phase, broadcasters/​SVoD ser­vices and institutions.

With a dou­ble degree in man­age­ment (ESSEC busi­ness school) and Data Sci­ence (CY tech Uni­ver­si­ty), Sarah Nehme is the Dig­i­tal Con­tent Man­ag­er of ONO, the French webtoon plat­form of Média Par­tic­i­pa­tions Group. Expert in man­ga and webtoon’s indus­tries, she worked as well at the Osa­ka Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan. She lever­ages her exper­tise and learn­ings to sharp­en ONO’s knowl­edge of read­ers’ habits and mar­ket trends to make the best deci­sions in con­tent acqui­si­tion and pro­mo­tion for the French Webtoons’ readers.

Keynote: Car­toon­Next gazes into the Crys­tal Ball at Animation’s ​‘Future Hori­zon’. And it’s not all ​‘doom and gloom’ fol­low­ing recent mar­ket downturns!

Alex brings over 15 years of expe­ri­ence in the TV indus­try to his cur­rent role at Par­rot Ana­lyt­ics. His back­ground includes serv­ing most recent­ly, as Head of Enter­tain­ment Ana­lyt­ics at Has­bro, where he focused on data-dri­ven strate­gies for con­tent. At Ende­mol Shine, as Head of Brands & Insights, Alex led audi­ence research, con­tribut­ing to the suc­cess of the group’s exten­sive net­work of pro­duc­tion companies.

Keynote: The inno­v­a­tive, social media-dri­ven ​“Samuel”, has come of age! A hit at Car­toon Forum, the emo­tive yet humor­ous depic­tion of ado­les­cence will soon be air­ing on France’s Arte, and Spain’s 3Cat and RTVE. A broad­cast­ing first for Spain!

Pablo is CEO of Pikkukala. He has pro­duced orig­i­nal series like ​“Roy­als Next Door”, ​“Saari”, ​“Fun­gi”, and inter­na­tion­al co-pro­duc­tions like ​“Samuel”, ​“Stinky Dog” or ​“Emma and Gui”. 

He has also pro­duced ani­ma­tion based on glob­al fran­chis­es like ​“Angry Birds Toons” for Rovio or the short films ​“Vem ska trös­ta Knyt­ter?” and ​“Hur gick det sen?” for Moomin Characters. 

He is an enthu­si­ast of trans­me­dia sto­ry­telling, and an advo­cate of Euro­pean animation.

Japhet Ash­er is the direc­tor of Polar­i­ty Rever­sal, a cross tech IP cre­ation and con­sult­ing com­pa­ny. He is an Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er, cre­ative leader and col­lab­o­ra­tive sto­ry­teller with over 30 years expe­ri­ence as an inno­va­tor of for­mats, prod­ucts, and nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ences across gen­res and plat­forms. He is an Oscar nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary mak­er, a cre­ator of Emmy win­ning ani­ma­tion, led dig­i­tal plat­forms for BBC Children’s, and is author of the world’s first AR pow­ered novel.

Keynote: What Next in Licens­ing? Cult licens­ing is the new byword.

Reems­borko works on the most inter­est­ing IP out there. Niche prop­er­ties are always big­ger and more com­mer­cial than you realise. We have a pas­sion for pop-cul­ture and great con­tacts across the whole of the licens­ing indus­try. Over the past 25 years we have nego­ti­at­ed and signed over 1000 con­tracts for music, film, TV, foot­ball, art, brands, video games and ani­mé prop­er­ties, work­ing with all the major and most of the minor licen­sor’s and agents, for UK, Euro­pean and glob­al deals. 

Flo­ri­an Cabane is a project man­ag­er in pro­duc­tion at the ser­vice Ciné­ma de la Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur since 2005. He active­ly par­tic­i­pates in the sup­port of the writ­ing, the devel­op­ment and the pro­duc­tion of cin­e­ma and audio­vi­su­al projects. He also is a project man­ag­er in many oth­er fields such as ani­ma­tion, web cre­ation, video games, immer­sive projects and short films.

Keynote: How to nur­ture and men­tor the next, new tal­ents in Africa, look­ing to cre­ate and finance their own shows?

Sébastien Onomo is a French pro­duc­er who has been work­ing in the film and audio­vi­su­al indus­try for over ten years. He has pro­duced numer­ous tele­vi­sion films and fea­ture films includ­ing ​“The For­est of Miss Tang” by Denis Do, which was select­ed at the 2023 Annecy Fes­ti­val for a screen­ing event and select­ed at the Cesars 2024, ​“The Siren” by Sepi­deh Far­si, the open­ing film in the Panora­ma selec­tion at the 2023 Berli­nale, select­ed at Annecy 2023 and he co-pro­duced ​“Augure” by Balo­ji, win­ner of the New Voice prize at Cannes 2023.

Keynote: What Next for Stu­dio Meala! This dynam­ic Irish stu­dio is all about push­ing the bound­aries of hand-drawn ani­ma­tion, and cre­at­ing a fair, sus­tain­able stu­dio for artists to thrive in.

Stephen Fagan has oper­at­ed in the ani­ma­tion indus­try for over two decades. Mov­ing from ani­ma­tor to pro­duc­er, Stephen has estab­lished two inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized stu­dios. A peo­ple-focused pro­duc­er, Stephen focus­es on build­ing envi­ron­ments where tal­ent can thrive, and great work is pro­duced as a result. Stephen is a co-founder of Stu­dio Meala a hand drawn ani­ma­tion stu­dio based in the West of Ireland.

Keynote: What Next for Stu­dio Meala! This dynam­ic Irish stu­dio is all about push­ing the bound­aries of hand-drawn ani­ma­tion, and cre­at­ing a fair, sus­tain­able stu­dio for artists to thrive in.

Shane is a mul­ti­fac­eted screen­writer and sto­ry edi­tor with a myr­i­ad of projects under his belt. He’s an indus­try vet­er­an adept at work­ing across numer­ous gen­res and age groups, from children’s ani­ma­tion to fea­ture length dra­mas. He spe­cialis­es in devel­op­ing IPs/​projects from the ground up, from the cre­ation and fine tun­ing of bibles to over­see­ing a team of hand-picked writ­ers and man­ag­ing the sto­ry edit­ing and scriptwrit­ing process.

Keynote: Ani­me is offi­cial­ly HUGE! Accord­ing to Japan­ese pow­er­house, Poly­gon and its recent research.

Span­ish film pro­duc­er, for­mer audio­vi­su­al con­sul­tant at the Madrid region­al gov­ern­ment, AMPAS and Span­ish Film Acad­e­my mem­ber, mem­ber of the board in CAR­TOON, PhD in Film Stud­ies at URJC, grad­u­at­ed in direct­ing at ARTSS Inter­na­tion­al UK and in the Enter­tain­ment Mas­ter Class at the Erich Pom­mer Insti­tute in Berlin. Since 2001 has pro­duced eleven fea­ture films for the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket, eight of them in ani­ma­tion, and has won five Goya Awards, twice the Jury Award in Annecy.

Keynote : Car­toon­Next puts chil­dren, front and cen­tre, of the debate on A.I and gen­er­a­tive A.I. Thanks to an inspir­ing keynote from renowned ethics fel­low at the Alan Tur­ing Insti­tute, Dr Mhairi Aitken, vot­ed one of the top 100 bril­lant woman in A.I ethics, internationally!

Dr Mhairi Aitken is an Ethics Fel­low at The Alan Tur­ing Insti­tute (the UK’s nation­al insti­tute for A.I and data sci­ence). Her research exam­ines social and eth­i­cal aspects of data sci­ence and A.I, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on how A.I impacts chil­dren. Mhairi was includ­ed in the 2023 inter­na­tion­al list of ​“100 Bril­liant Women in A.I Ethics” and is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to media dis­cus­sions on A.I and data.

Keynote: ​“Ani­mat­ing The Future!” Car­toon­Next presents The Dor Broth­ers, cel­e­brat­ed A.I. pio­neers and ‘“among the most pro­lif­ic pro­duc­ers of A.I. in the world”, accord­ing to Char­lie Fink of Forbes mag­a­zine. They ​“rock cin­e­mat­ic A.I.”

Yonatan Dor, CEO of The Dor Broth­ers, is an AI Visu­als expert at the fore­front of the AI-dri­ven visu­al con­tent indus­try, tran­si­tion­ing from music video pro­duc­tion to AIgen­er­at­ed com­mer­cials. His exper­tise has pro­duced over 150 acclaimed music videos and led inno­v­a­tive projects such as ​“Event Sta­tion” which merges AI cre­ativ­i­ty with the phys­i­cal world. Yonatan is also known for his pre­sen­ta­tions at promi­nent events and col­lab­o­rat­ing with teams at Microsoft and Pika Labs.

Marc Rius start­ed out as a scriptwriter for live-action films, before mov­ing into ani­ma­tion as a script assis­tant at Supin­fo­com Arles (now MoPA) and then at ENSI. In 2010, with Math­ieu Rey and Thomas Giu­siano, he found­ed TNZPV in Arles. In 2020, they cre­at­ed TNZPV Annecy. Marc Rius con­tin­ues to work as a scriptwriter. He is notably the author of Pachy­derme, a short film short­list­ed for the 2024 Oscars, and Mer­ry Christ­mas Mon­sieur Hulot: a fea­ture film, which he also co-directed.

Keynote: What’s New and Hap­pen­ing in the World of Pub­lish­ing and what fresh oppor­tu­ni­ties might there be for cre­ators and sto­ry­tellers in Europe?

Bob Hig­gins over­sees cre­ative and busi­ness oper­a­tions for Trust­bridge Enter­tain­ment, a divi­sion of Trust­bridge Glob­al Media, a mul­ti-screen devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that part­ners with cre­ators to devel­op enter­tain­ing con­tent for chil­dren and fam­i­lies. TGM, a mul­ti-plat­form con­tent which has a large port­fo­lio tar­get­ing a glob­al audi­ence of all ages while focus­ing on pro­duc­ing high-qual­i­ty con­tent. Cur­rent slate includes ​“Maisy Mouse”, ​“Judy Moody”, ​“The Cir­cus Ship” and ​“Dash­er”.