Local Malaysian animation industry update

This story was submitted a while ago to my editor as a possible cover story, but was never used:

What's to look out for the animation industry in 2008?
By Hazimin Sulaiman

WHAT does 2008 hold for the animation industry? Well for starters, in May we will hopefully get to see much anticipated release of Malaysia's first full-length three-dimensional (3-D) animation movie Geng: The Adventure Begins sometime in May (international release: 2009). But what about the industry as a whole? We ask players in the industry.Executive director and producer of local animation outfit Saymohm Sdn Bhd, Fuad Samad believes that animation industry seems to be on a roll this year. Thanks to support from various agencies such as from states, MOSTE, KEKWA, MDeC and FINAS. "Everyone seems to be in the new media industry.

Even state governments are looking into animation and into providing human capital. They are looking into providing career opportunities for the youth," says Fuad. Something which Fuad hopes will change however, is the perspective of braodcasters towards local animation.

Broadcasters tend to have different views towards animation compared to drama or other local productions, hence the difference in the rates paid out as per program syndication. For example a syndicated local animation episode, with no sponsor, gets paid a flat rate of RM1,000. This applies to completed productions and not those still in the pipeline. To date however, the only local broadcaster which funds for entire local animation projects is still RTM.

Rocket Fish Studios based in Technology Park Malaysia, is hard at work creating content for the world. Staffed with local animators thanks to their innovative training scheme, Rocket Fish has trained a total of seven batches of more than 100 graduates. The free training entails graduates to be employable in other Flash-based animation studios. According to its general manager, Alice Dizon Manuel, more than 30 per cent of graduates have decided to stay on. The trained talent is important in the roadmap as Manuel reveals that " a lot of studios successfully develop ideas to sell out from Malaysia. For Rocket Fish, more outsourced projects have come up." Currently Rocket Fish is working on producing full pilot episodes of pre-school series Ketchup & Mustard and Backyard Buddies, to be shown at the MIPTV festival in April. Among the other stuff that Rocket Fish has churned out include the Warren Buffet's Millionarires' Club DVD and Skunk Fu for Cartoon Network Asia to be out this year.

Chairman and public relations chair of the ACM-Siggraph Kuala Lumpur Professional Chapter, Christopher Gomez says that development in the film industry, in general, is on the way up, but things are unacceptably slow. "The world around us is highly competitive. Unfortunately a small country like Malaysia, we absolutely cannot afford to go slow because this equals to dropping out of the game. The rules of the game are the same, but we're playing against players who are a lot faster, far more agile and have more stamina to withstand economic cycles," observes Gomez.This is unfortunate given the potential: "I've been watching the growth of, and changes in, the animation and computer graphics industry here in Asia, very closely the past decade. I can safely say, the kind of animation and CG works you see coming out of Asia today, are all quite amazing," Gomez notes.Gomez believes that We still do not have a clear IP framework.

"Even if the government claims they do, people in industry have not been well informed about this. Though the MDeC in general has arranged IP talks/seminars, I've yet to hear about similar talks by the other relevant ministries in film and TV-content production," Gomez says.Gomez feels disheartened that when he speaks to some senior executives in government about how slow things are in Malaysia, their quick answer seems to be that "we don't have the funds like out neighbors Singapore". "So it makes me wonder, if we don't have the funds, then why do we have agencies who preach about their interest in helping to build the industry," adds Gomez.

Industry building Gomez believes requires a lot of funds. And if you do not have the funds, maybe its not a good idea to blow your trumpet. He notes that it is embarrassing to think that we had a media initiative (through the MSC) easily 10 years ahead of our counterparts; and yet today we are lagging behind Singapore and even Thailand. As for Siggraph's 2008 initiative, Gomez says that for the first time in history, SIGGRAPH will be bringing it's conference to Asia. SIGGRAPH Asia will be held in Singapore, from Dec 10-13, 2008. "Some of the exciting things people should flock to see at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008, are the Computer Animation Festival, Emerging Technologies, the industry exhibition and the Jobs Fair," says Gomez.

Nicholas Shariff Collins, senior manager, Multimedia Development Corporation admits that a lot of talents a re coming out from local universities and colleges. "We want to help them move up. We are looking into pre seed programs with funds up to RM50,000 to help them start out," says Collins. The MDeC initiative he says will link to professionals to hear from experts so that they get to share in on the relevant background experiences and knowledge for the market. The future, Collins feels is going to be a good one: "look at the Asian region. There's exponential growth of the middle class and thus growing demand for content. All we have to do is to tap in the global market from the very start," Collins adds.One way to do this is to have more buy-in programs. A program started by MDeC last year to match collaborators from overseas with local industry players.

To encourage local growth, MDeC and MRCB have also opened up an incubation centre in Plaza Sentral KL.Besides these efforts, Collins feels that the industry needs to realiase that other delivery platforms are also available. Although there's growth in cable and satellitel broadcasting, they should also look into broadband and telecommunication opportunites. They should start to think out of the box as their products might work surprisingly well on other platforms. For example in Hong Kong he cites that there is a great demand for content. Up till now people were not sure what type of content to provide in Hong Kong; but it was discovered that the food channel is extremely popular.Although everything points out that demand is growing, revenue however might not grow exponentially as competition increases and budgets continue to be tight.

On the plus side, Collins belives that in a lot of saturated markets such as foreign European and American markets, companies are looking towards Asia- which is not just one market, but a lot of territories to cover including China, South East Asia and other emerging Asian countries. With all this in mind, 2008 could be the big year that the local animation industry has been holding out for.