New Firm to Make Animated Shows for Net

The latest entry in the Internet entertainment boom is Icebox.com, a Santa Monica start-up being unveiled today that has signed up a roster of accomplished TV producers to create animated shows exclusively for the Net.

In February, Icebox.com will launch shows created by producers associated with series such as “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons,” and “The X-Files.” Icebox.com, backed by the Santa Monica Internet incubator ECompanies, has 16 shows planned, each of which will present a new two- to five-minute episode once a week.

By year’s end, the company plans to have 50 shows available on its Web site, https://www.icebox.com. Each episode will cost less than $15,000 to produce, it said.

Icebox.com joins a crowded field of companies producing shows for the Web. They range from independents such as Los Angeles-based IFilm.com to the Pop.com collaboration between DreamWorks SKG and Imagine Entertainment.

So far, the Net shows are confined to a fraction of a PC screen and often have jumpy sound and picture quality. The sites aren’t profitable, but hope to make money through ads and e-commerce.

Icebox.com’s focus on animation and its lineup of producers are “a couple of big steps in the right direction to make it more likely that they succeed,” said Mark Hardie, a former entertainment and technology analyst with Forrester Research who recently formed his own online entertainment firm.

Animated TV shows such as “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Beavis and Butt-Head” got their starts as short features, and some Icebox.com shows will probably find their way onto TV, said Chief Executive Steve Stanford, who headed the new technology division at Beverly Hills talent agency International Creative Management.