Cartoonscape not really what I’d call cartoon scope. (cartoonscape.com)

Member Name: Marland

Product:	cartoonscape.com
Date:	01/05/01 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not festooned with advertising, how to hints for cartooners.

Disadvantages: Not a whole heap of choice.

So what is Cartoonscape
Cartoonscape is what I would call a family cartoon site. The site is 'anchored’ by a female teen age cartoon character called Toonula.

The Cartoonscape web site is an off shoot of Cool Beans Productions, which is a 2D/3D digital animation company based in Sheffield, England. Credits for the artists behind Cartoonscape include: ‘Private Eye, Punch, The Times, King Features Syndicate as well as Marvel Comics DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics and 2000AD.’

There is not a huge variety of animation and cartoons compared to some other sites. I found nearly all of the cartoons amusing to some degree but my tastes are more Joe cartoon and kill frog. Having a slightly warped sense of humour I particularly liked the little Callahan animations.

The quality of the animation on offer is certainly good and as already mentioned suitable for family viewing. Download time is also good.

What else is on offer
There are small games and previews of comics.

I found the cool stuff page a little annoying because you view the ‘cool stuff’ in a scrolling window, in my opinion it scrolls too fast – not so cool!

The cool stuff on offer (if you’re a ‘hot’ clicker) include personalised WAP or Web postcards that you can send. The problem with this facility is that there is no opportunity to see the thumbnail at full size before making your selection and the thumbnails are too small for you to properly see what they are.

You can also download a free desktop calendar which is updated every month (whether this is automatically done, or you have to return to the site to do it is not made clear)

Cool stuff also offers a screen-saver for you to download, but again you don’t properly get a chance to view the screen-saver before downloading.

Last but not least, there is a free gift. This turns out to be a jummy signed photo of T
oonula. Which I thought was quite disappointing, but fair do’s, I’m a long way from a teeny bopper. Someone out there may want one!

If you click on cartoon service you will find a link to a page with tips for how to make and sell your own cartoons, which I thought was quite good.

Conclusion
Toonula and her free photo offer seem aimed at young pre-teen girls, yet the animation and cartoon content of the site seemed suitable for your ‘guardian reader’ type looking for a giggle.
All in all it’s an OK site which given time may get a lot better when it finds out what it actually wants to be and who it is for. But as it stands it’s not going in my bookmark list.

Summary: