We hope you’re enjoying our Cartoon Forum 2024 project preview this week! In case you missed our first two picks, we like the look of Ellipse Animation’s Lost in the Future and La Cabane/Thuristar’s A Lamb’s Stew.

A home is supposed to be where you feel safe—a peaceful retreat from a chaotic world. But when your home is a gigantic, decommissioned war robot from outer space who crash-lands on top of your house, trouble and adventures are to be expected. 

H.O.M.E. is a 52 x 11-minute graphic novel adaptation that TeamTO has developed with head writer Mark Steinberg (Hotel Transylvania: The Series) and director Thierry Marchand (Okatapodi). The French studio is on deck to pitch the project at Cartoon Forum with an animated teaser and a pilot script broken into story beats. 

The series concept revolves around the Kadics, an upbeat blended family of four that has a mysterious connection to the robot, making its arrival in their lives not entirely random. 

TeamTO is still evolving the 2D animation style, but marketing and new business director Patricia de Wilde says it will “stay close in spirit to the designs of the comic book.” Plotlines and characters will also evolve from the printed source material as TeamTO “digs deeper into potential stories, increasing the number of characters, developing their personalities and new relationships, and exploring fun galactical stories.” 

“We loved the idea of a family reacting in such an easygoing way to an earth-shattering situation such as having an intergalactic robot crash-landing on their future house—moving forward with their lives as if nothing had happened,” explains de Wilde.

The situation is further complicated when the robot (whose full name shortens to the acronym H.O.M.E.) tries to help the two kids use his alien technology to cut every corner possible, whether it’s a good idea or not! “It’s pure comedy and fun, taking place both on Earth and in space,” says de Wilde. 

TeamTO will be presenting H.O.M.E. on Thursday September 19 at 10:45 a.m. in the Blue Room in hopes of attracting “international broadcasters, platforms and co-production partners that fall in love with this concept and want to help us take it to the stars,” says de Wilde.