GoAnimate Adopts SaaS Model for its User-Generated Animation Platform

GoAnimate, a company which offers an online platform that is billed as making it easy for anyone to create their own animations, announced last week that it is making its platform available via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, so that companies can deploy its animation capabilities on their own Web sites in order to increase "brand interaction." "For the last year at GoAnimate.com, we have been helping major brands from hip-hop stars like Akon to major movie franchises like 'Star Trek' to give their fans an entirely new way to interact with them via their own customizable animations," GoAnimate founder and CEO, Alvin Hung, said in a prepared statement. "By licensing the GoAnimate platform as a service, we are enabling companies to integrate our advanced animation automation technology into their own Web sites for a completely new brand interaction tool that introduces a revolution in how customers and fans engage with their favorite brands."

In its press materials announcing its new SaaS approach, GoAnimate claims that "the term 'brand interaction' is thrown around a lot these days, and often times is used to refer to brands' use of social media and social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to engage their audiences. While some brands do use these tools effectively to interact with their customers and fans," the company says, "most brands use them primarily as broadcasting tools--new ways to tell a lot of people what the brand is up to. This does not always encourage true 'brand interaction,' where the customer or fan is empowered to engage and interact with the brand on their terms," the company argues. The company claims that by "putting customizable, animated versions of...brands into the hands of customers and fans and enabling them to create their own content," its platform achieves this "true brand interaction."

GoAnimate has already lined up a high-profile customer for its new SaaS offering: Cartoon Network, which is using the offering to power a service called Toon Creator that encourages children to create their own animations using popular Cartoon Network characters. "As the leading kids' entertainment provider, we are encouraging kids to think out of the box via new and innovative platforms," Benjamin Grubbs, regional director of Turner Entertainment Interactive Media, said in a prepared statement. "Cartoon Network's Toon Creator, built on GoAnimate's SaaS platform, gives kids the unique opportunity to create their own animation using some of the network's most popular characters. For the first time ever, kids can step into the shoes of a Cartoon Network animator while being able to interact with their favorite toons like never before."

In order to promote the new Toon Creator service, Cartoon Network is partnering with Hewlett-Packard on a contest called the Toon Creator Awards, that will run from July 13th through September 30th, and that is targeted at the Asia-Pacific market (note: the competition, which is backed by various educational outreach activities, is open to entrants in Australia, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, and Vietnam). The contest will invite children to create their own 25-second animation using characters from the series, "Ben 10: Alien Force" and "Chowder."