Tim Burton to Animate Cartoons for Shockwave

Shockwave.com, an online entertainment site owned by San Francisco-based Macromedia Inc., said it has signed an exclusive deal with Tim Burton in which the director and animator will develop a series of short cartoons for the fledgling Web site.

Burton, the director of “Batman” and other films, joins a growing number of prominent Hollywood talents pursuing Internet ventures, and his deal comes at a time when entertainment sites are proliferating on the Web and competing for viewers’ attention.

The deal calls for Burton to create 24 animated features ranging from two to five minutes. The first installment is expected to air sometime next spring.

In turn, Shockwave will pay for the production of the shorts and give Burton a small percentage of the company, one of many entertainment sites poised to sell stock to the public in the next year.

Burton, the creative force behind such films as “Edward Scissorhands” and the recent “Sleepy Hollow,” said he was intrigued by the prospect of exploring ideas and characters outside the traditional Hollywood system.

“It’s nice to have the kind of freedom to try out an idea without having to have a lot of meetings,” he said. “I get to do shorts with a character I want to explore, and this medium seems perfect.”

Burton said his work will focus on a character called Stain Boy that appeared in his recent book, “The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories.” His online work will be done using software from Macromedia, whose Flash program is used to view streamed video.

Rob Burgess, chief executive of Shockwave.com, said the design sensibilities of Stain Boy are “perfect for today’s Internet” because the simple drawing style reduces the lengthy download times and image quality problems that often are found in online video.

Burton retains the rights to his works, which Shockwave officials pointed out could later be expanded for television or film if they find a wide audience online. If not, Burton dryly pointed out, perhaps the characters could be featured “in an ice show in Las Vegas.”