Animation is a big business. Just ask major media companies Disney (DIS) and News Corp. (NWS), which both have had big cartoon hits this summer with Disney-owned Pixar’s “Ratatouille” and News Corp.’s “The Simpsons Movie.” “Ratatouille” is a mouse’s whisker under $200 million at the U.S. box office while “The Simpsons” has grossed $165 million.

Then there’s DreamWorks Animation (DWA), which has had the biggest animated hit of all with “Shrek the Third.” It has generated more than $320 million at the box office. And animation is big on TV as well. Viacom’s (VIAB) Comedy Central has been enjoying the success of “South Park” for a decade and News Corp.’s Fox, of course, has counted on “The Simpsons” for almost 20 years.

So it should come as no surprise that start-ups are also trying to cash in on the allure of animation. And one company, Israeli-based AniBOOM, could generate a lot of buzz in the next few months. AniBOOM creates animation software, lets people upload cartoons to its Web site and also funds independent animated shorts. The company’s Shape Shifter tool, which uses only squares, circles and triangles to create images, was used to create that abstract rendering of my head shot to the above right. Pretty cool, huh?

And on Tuesday, AniBOOM hits the online video jackpot. It will announce that it will have its own channel for animated shorts set up on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. The company already has such a channel on Yahoo!(YHOO) Video. AniBOOM CEO Uri Shinar told me during an interview last week that he’s excited about getting the site’s content out in front of a wider audience.

But Shinar is not content on just being an Internet home for independent animation. He said that he is hoping to have one of its cartoons get picked up for distribution by a larger media firm.

To that end, he said that AniBOOM will be developing ten different series over the next few months with the hopes of having at least one become a big hit that has mass appeal. He showed me clips from one contender that looks like it has a lot of potential. It casts the presidential candidates in updated versions of classic movies. For example, Hillary Clinton as Princess Leia from “Star Wars” and Rudy Giuliani as the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz.”

“We’re throwing ten series out there and hope that one of them will be the next ‘South Park.’ If something catches on virally, it can be the next big hit,” Shinar said.

AniBOOM is interesting since it potentially has more revenue streams than the average online video player. In addition to advertising, Shinar said there’s the potential for AniBOOM to generate sales from licensing its content with cell phone carriers, branding its tools — in addition to Shape Shifter, AniBOOM will soon be launching a stop motion animation product — and of course, making money from its in-house studio. That’s where the big money could lie.

“The studio is where the real upside is. We only need one series to become a big hit and then you have the possibility of a TV series, merchandising, etc. We just hope to use the Internet as a launching pad,” Shinar says.

AniBOOM has raised $4.5 million in financing from Israeli venture capital firm Evergreen Venture Partners and Shinar said he’s received offers from other VCs. And now that AniBOOM is making the big step to get its content on the most popular online video sites, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the firm draw (pardon the pun) a lot more interest from investors.