For anyone still harboring the illusion that the World Wide Web is going to overtake the television set anytime soon, Buzz Potamkin has a story to share.
Potamkin, a former executive producer at Hanna-Barbera Productions who helped develop the 1980s hit cartoon The Berenstain Bears, left Hollywood three years ago to produce an animated series called WhirlGirl for Visionary Media, a Web site based in New York.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
WhirlGirl seemed like an allusion to what Potamkin's company promised to do to old media companies. The main character, Kia Cross, nerd by day and superheroine by night, prevents an evil media empire from controlling viewers' lives.
But for Potamkin, it was much easier in cartoonland than it has been in real life.
"At first we thought we would be a destination site that would attract millions of people and advertising, then we tried licensing our shows to other sites like Showtime," Potamkin said. "What we've learned is that the audience is just not out there on the Web yet."
Potamkin is still the chief executive of Visionary Media, one of the dotcoms that vowed to circumvent the major networks. But now, Visionary is among the few online animated companies remaining, and it is trying to survive by turning to the very networks it promised to make obsolete.
Most online television companies that once sprouted in San Francisco and Silicon Alley in Manhattan have faded out, abandoning their loft studios and selling their equipment at dirt-cheap prices. When Pseudo.com, the high-profile online television and animation company, went out of business last summer, it seemed the sector would collapse.
Critics say these companies miscalculated how long it would take for high-speed Internet connections, which make watching television on the Web practical, to spread into homes and offices. Experts now say the all-purpose box that delivers the Web and television and monitors the heating in the house is a long way from reality.
"It may never happen," said David Card, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, the New York Internet research firm. "We are still feeling our way around it and certainly have not come up with an online television business model."
Two of the most prominent Web animation companies left standing, Visionary and Bullseye Art, both based in Manhattan, are trying to stay alive by using the technology and techniques they developed for Web animation to create broadcast television programming more quickly and cheaply.
Visionary and Bullseye both started as Web animation companies in 1997, with hopes that they would become destination sites where viewers would come for animated programming, and that profits would flow from the advertising. But as it became clear that they could not attract the advertising dollars, both companies adjusted their business plans and began licensing cartoons to other Web sites.
Visionary landed a deal to produce weekly episodes of WhirlGirl to be broadcast on Showtime's Sho.com, and Bullseye was able to place its cartoons at Razorfish Studios, Icebox.com, Atom Films and other sites. But the companies ran into trouble last year as the economy began to slow and the companies they were working with began to reduce spending.
"People were eager to produce content for the Web, they had the talent and the tools to do it, and people were going to the sites," said Mark Schneider, the president and self-proclaimed designated adult at Bullseye.
"But there was not a financial model to make it work."
Faced with growing costs and decreased revenue, both companies began working last year to adapt their Flash technology, originally designed to move large vector graphics through small Internet pipelines, to produce animation for broadcast television.
"The realization on our part was that traditional media, broadcast media, has been there and is there, and that is where we need to be," Schneider said.
The normal process for developing television animation is expensive and involves Hollywood animators' drawing storyboards that are actually sent out, generally to India and other countries where labor is much cheaper, to be redrawn frame by frame.
It often takes about 20,000 drawings to make one 30-minute episode of The Simpsons or The Smurfs, at a cost of US$350,000 to US$500,000 even before paying the writers, executives and voice talent. Slight changes, in color or events, later in the process can increase costs exponentially. Cost overruns are one of the greatest concerns among studios, experts say.
But Flash can cut costs by allowing animators to cut and paste from file to file, speeding up the process and eliminating the need for drawers overseas. This computerized process also allows files to be linked and slight shifts in color to be seamlessly made, as well as other changes later in the process.
Potamkin estimates that Visionary can produce a 30-minute episode for US$140,000 to US$180,000. Schneider believes that the benefits are not just the reduced prices, but that animation can be done so much faster and at the last minute.
The problem with Flash had been that, despite its ease, studios were convinced that it did not measure up to broadcast quality.
That was until Bullseye produced a 30-second introduction for The Rosie O'Donnell Show that was nominated for an Emmy this year.
But there are those who defend the traditional methods.
Eric Radomski, the executive creative officer at Film Roman, an animation studio in North Hollywood, California, that handles The Simpsons and King of the Hill, said that even though the firm had done programs in Flash, the highest-quality programs must have some elements of the traditional process.
"Flash technology is great, but it can't be looked at as anything other than a new technique," said Radomski, a three-time Emmy winner who has overseen recent changes in the studio's animation unit. "It is not going to really change the industry. It is more of a technological enhancement and a step in the right direction of a hybrid of traditional and digital animation."
Despite such hurdles, Card, the Jupiter analyst, said the new companies had some advantages. "The technology is finally there to do high-quality, low-cost animation, with the idea that studios can have more control over the process and the costs," he said.
Visionary has since developed a 14-minute broadcast-quality episode of WhirlGirl, and it is negotiating a contract to create half-hour episodes of the program for an international distribution company. Bullseye has since signed a deal with MTV to develop a television version of its Webtoon Muffy and the Muff Mob, a hip version of Strawberry Shortcake.
Even with the high hopes for the future, Josh Kinsberg, the chief creative officer and founder of, said he no longer had visions of transforming Hollywood. "Best-case scenario now is that we get funded, keep growing and compete with the studios on our own," he said. "Getting acquired and becoming a part of a studio is not the worst thing that could happen."
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