As Teletoon Canada announces the 10 finalists in its English and French online contests for the Teletoon at Night Pilot Project, it’s also keeping an eye out for its next Fugget About It.

The first Teletoon Pilot Project winner, Fugget About It, was greenlit in December for production on a 13-part series in English and French. The network’s VP of marketing Russell Ward says the net is on the hunt for a project with similar potential, noting that the scope of the project was expand this year to accommodate entries from more than just industry professionals.

“We wanted to extend our reach beyond just the production community and to the world of amateur animators,” Ward tells Playback Daily. “With technology changing, people from different backgrounds can enter and we thought we’d see what else was out there.”

The finalists in the English contest are Gotcha  (Sandra Loke), Samurai Terrorist (Matthew Viveen), Great Minds Taste Alike (Sheryl Vedamani), The Kitten Factory (Henry Budd) and Off the Wall (Robert Nisperos), and the finalists in the French contest are Les Imbroglios (Jonathan Savoie), Jean-Paul (Fred Pitteloud), La justicière rose (Philippe Ramsay Gaudreau), Cobaye en fuite (Steve Ouellette) and Swing (Carl Beauchemin).

The finalists will compete for public votes to take home the $10,000 grand prize, and a trip to the Ottawa International Animation Festival and the Television Animation conference. But, Ward notes, the opportunities for those who submitted work don’t necessarily end at the close of the contest.

“The process from here is to award the contest prize, but we’re going to mine it all and look through everything to see what, if anything, makes sense for us to try to develop further,” adds Ward. “We received a lot of submissions that may or may not work as a series, but are fantastic examples of the type of animation out there.”

He says that Teletoon was took humour under heavy consideration when deciding the finalists, as well as looking at ratings and comments, but noted that “beautiful or action-oriented” projects also made the cut, and storytelling was key.

The call for votes will be promoted primarily on air and through social channels, Teletoon’s Fred at Night block. The video with the most votes by Sunday, August 28 wins and will be revealed on-air and online on Sept. 18.