4mations.tv goes LIVE

abduzeedo - 09/23/2008

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4mations.tv is a collaboration between Channel 4, Aardman Animations, Reality Digital and Lupus Films and has a strong focus on rewarding animators who upload their work - offering
cash rewards of up to £1000 for popular content, competitions, opportunities to pitch for commissions, and even the potential to get on TV.

Channel 4 have launched 4mations.tv, a new video-sharing site aimed at bringing together the best animation from around the world.

The 4mations website is based around a video-sharing platform, allowing users to upload, rate and comment on content. Additional functionality includes the "Thinks" application,
that allows users to quickly and easily create their own personalised animations. Thinks has been developed by the guys behind the cult web-app "Fuzzwich" (www.Fuzzwich.com).

The site was designed by Oscar-winning Aardman Animations (based in Bristol UK) and built by Reality Digital (based in San Francisco USA), and is based on Reality's "Opus" video
sharing platform.

4mations' visual design is based around an iconic kitten-skull character called "General Tiddles", created by designer Gavin Strange and the Aardman creative team.

4mations launches with a whole host of specially commissioned content from the UK animation community, including animated series, virals and games. The site launches with the
series "Hate" - an animated spoof of celeb magazine Heat - and the "General Tiddles" series.

Overall 35 individual films and 2 interactive games from 14 animators were commissioned for the launch of the site. Animators include The Brothers McLeod, James Harris & Gus
Hughes, and Richard Barnett & Steve Smith from Trunk. Camilla Deakin, Director of Lupus Films and 4mations.tv’s Executive Producer, comments "We put the word out to the animation
community that we wanted ideas for funny stuff to run on 4mations around launch, and we were blown away by the great response we got. We are now working with 14 different teams
on some really funny and often very dark material. One thing this has proved to me once and for all is that UK animators are very talented but also very sick and twisted!”

Jon Gisby, Channel 4’s Director of New Media and Technology, said “4mations will enable us to meet the needs of an audience that is increasingly online. It’s also the logical
next step in working with the great creators of animation and we’re thrilled to provide an online home for such a vibrant community. This is another example of Channel 4 working
with its partners to reinvent itself for a fully digital future”

Links to the site and content:

About the team

Channel 4 - Channel 4 is a UK-based public-service broadcaster, originally set up as the fourth television service in the UK. Channel 4 has now expanded to include multiple digital TV channels, Film 4 (its film making arm) and numerous websites including Channel4.com and E4.com. http://www.Channel4.com

Aardman Animations - Aardman, based in Bristol (UK) and co-founded and run by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, is a world leader in animation, and the company behind
Oscar-winning animation Wallace and Gromit. It produces feature films, television series and television commercials for both the domestic and international market. Their
multi-award winning productions are novel, entertaining, brilliantly characterised and full of charm that reflects the unique talent, energy and personal commitment of the very
special people who make up the Aardman team. The studio’s work is often imitated and yet the company continues to lead the field producing a rare brand of visually stunning and
amusing independent and commercials productions.

Lupus Films - Lupus Films is one of the UK’s leading producers of animation and children’s TV programmes. The company was set up by Camilla Deakin and Ruth Fielding, who
were previously the Arts and Animation commissioning team at Channel 4. Lupus Films has made a variety of animation and live-action shows for the BBC, Five, UKTV and Channel 4,
and are currently in production, in collaboration with Pinky & Perky Enterprises, with a revival of ‘The Pinky & Perky Show’ for CBBC. In addition they manage Channel 4’s
animation short film schemes AnimateTV, run jointly with the Arts Council, and the soon to be launched Animated Digital Shorts with the UK Film Council.

Reality Digital - Founded in 2003, Reality Digital is a San Francisco-based company that provides software products and a hosted service platform for storing sharing, managing, and monetizing user
generated content (video, photos, games, text and more).Reality is a leader in the white-label video-sharing space, providing solutions to clients including MTV, ITV (UK), VH1, Atom and Lonely Planet.In March 2008, Reality secured a $6.3 million in series B funding from Openview venture Partners Finances to help accelerate its growth.

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About author

My name is Fabio Sasso, I'm a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I'm the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through abduzeedo.

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Thank You very nice topic

oyunlar 10/14/2008

Hi,
Video sharing is all the rage since a while now, and it does not seem to end. Everybody wants to share their videos, their passions and the things they like. There are so many sites around to publish videos on the web that it is sometimes hard to make a choice. We know some of the big players on the market like YouTube, Revver or Dailymotion, but there are so many others competing to be the number one, or targeting a specific audience, be it geographically (China, Japan, Turkey...), by language (German, Arabic, French...) or for the kind of content they focus on (cooking, planes, extreme sports...).
I have compiled a growing list of more than 800 video sharing sites, video search engines, and video download sites that you can check at http://www.ilikesharingvideos.com
For each of them, you will get useful information such as their history, the country from which most of their visitors come, their niche, their rank, their latest news...
This site offers some other interesting features, like a forum about online videos, how to make money with your videos, how to create your own YouTube site, video contests, etc.
So if you are interested in video sharing or online video marketing, give an eye to this site, it worths it.
Cheers

I like sharing videos (not verified) 09/23/2008

Thanks for checking out 4mations - we hope that you're enjoying the site.

We're hoping that it will provide a hub of entertainment for both animators but also those who have 10 minutes to spare and are looking for something to make them giggle. Lots of the content is super funny, whilst lots is also wrong ;)

Mel :)