We were invited by The Philippine Department of Trade and Industry – Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB) to attend a Business Matching Mission together with the Philippine Trade and Investment Center –Seoul, Korea and ASEAN-Korea Center (AKC). The forum entitled: Philippine-Korea Creative Industry Cooperation Forum, was held last February 6, 2020, from 9AM to 5PM at the Ballroom 1 Fairmont Hotel, Makati. Before the event, we were given a list of companies that will be participating and the B2B schedule sheet where we can schedule a meeting with them for 30 minutes. Since the B2B will start at 1:30 PM until 5:00 PM, we can only schedule 7 meetings from a total of 16 companies. (Originally there were 18 companies, but 2 begged off due to the corona-virus scare.)
The companies were from 3 industries, Animation, Game Development, and Web-toons.
We were able to set meetings with 5 animation companies, 1 game development company, and 1 web-toon company.
I brought along Jap Tolentino, our Game Designer, and Baron Dimaranan, IT expert, just in case technical questions are asked.
Jap, Baron, and Alstaire
During the event, Undersecretary Abdulgani M. Macatoman, DTI Philippines gave the welcome remarks. Plus there were some congratulatory remarks from the different ambassadors of both the Philippines and Korea. Then there was an official Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signing between the Korea Animation Producers Association (KAPA) headed by Mr. Jn-kyu Nam, President and the Animation Council of the Philippines (ACPI) headed by Mr. Juan Miguel Del Rosario, President.
Alstaire with Mr. Juan Miguel del Rosario, President of ACPI, Mr. Rene de Guzman, Toon City and Mr. Rene Misa, Executive Director of ACPI.
MOA SigningAfter this there were 3 presentations, first entitled The Philippine Creative Economy by Mr. Senen M. Perlada, Director of DTI-EMB, he showed some infographics of the Philippine Creative Industry. The 2nd presentation was by Mr. Juan Miguel Del Rosario, President of ACPI about the Business Opportunities in the Philippine Industry, more infographics and videos about the different studios here.
Alvin Juban GDAP Presentation
Presentation 3 was from Mr. Alvin Juban, President of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP), instead of showing more infographics, he told everyone on how Ubisoft, a AAA Game Company from France, put up an office here in the Philippines. It was the liveliest of the presentations. The last presentation was from Mr. Miguel Matthew “Magoo” del Mundo, OIC and Acting President of SIKAP – Creative Content Creators Association of the Philippines, who talked about Doing Business in the Creative Content Industry.
Baron and Alstaire with Migs del Mundo, former Top Peg artist, and Magoo del Mundo’s brother.
The closing remarks were from Undersecretary Rowel S. Barba of the Department of Trade and Industry Philippines.
Alstaire with Lawrence Panganiban
A Networking Luncheon soon followed, I was able to talk to a guy named Lawrence Panganiban, who was representing the Cebu Chamber of Commerce. He was surprised that there was a creative industry in the Philippines, and he was so enthusiastic to be invited.
Next was the highlight of the event, the One on One Business Meetings. The Korean Companies were arranged in the function room with a table and provided an interpreter. We were able to add to our meetings because of some of our scheduled meetings were short, so we had time to talk to other companies that we did not schedule for.
Below are the companies we met with and the summary of each meeting.
For Animation:
Company Name: DPS
Representative: Jin-Kyu Nam
Position: President
Website: http://dpsani.com/eng/
Current Project: Hold on tight! – http://dpsani.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=2_1_1e&wr_id=17
About Company: They needed help on an animation series, which look very much like Japanese Anime, they had 8 Episodes at 22 minutes each that were outsourced to China. I think they had to pull it out from China because of some misunderstandings. Their target deadline though was for the end of 2020. Out of all the meetings we had, he was the only one who was interested in visiting our studio. Which the representative of DTI said, was a positive note, it meant he was interested in us.
Company Name: Tak Toon Enterprises
Representative: Han Tae Sik
Position: Producer
Website: https://taktoon.modoo.at/
Current Project: The Curious World of Linda 36 episodes x 7 mins each – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg7VDKdvY2w , The Forks with Spiky Hands – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ej5AbbxnII&list=PL4_CUw2Br9c5uq5PrTC1xfu52aLwdSaSO
About Company: They have both 2D and 3D animation projects that need outsourcing. The different art styles, some were like cut out characters and some were full 3D, but their target audience were younger kids.
Jap, Alstaire and Mr. Nick Jo of Pictionary Art Factory
Company Name: Pictionary Art Factory
Representative: Nick Jo
Position: Director / CFO
Website: https://www.pictionary.tv/
Current Project: Aerover – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjVN8MGBuxs&feature=youtu.be
About Company: They needed help on Episodes of Aerover, a 2D action animation with 3D drone animation. They were willing to outsource from pre-production to post-production.
Company Name: RedRover Co., Ltd.
Representative: Won Chuil Hwang
Position: Head of Animation Business / Producer
Website: http://www.redrover.co.kr/en/home_en
Current Project: https://www.awn.com/news/pipeline-studios-toonbox-entertainment-developing-nut-job-tv-series
About Company: They are developing a Nut Job 2D animation TV Series based on the 3D Animated movie that came out in 2014. They said the movie was a hit, with a budget of 43 million USD, they made 120 million USD in the box office, but the sequel though was a flop though, maybe due to marketing. I told them that I was able to see the first movie, but I did not know there was a sequel. They wanted to do something with their IP so they are planning to make a 2D animated series like Tangled and Big Hero Six, which also started as 3D Animated movies.
Company Name: ANYZAC
Representative: Byungjun Lee
Position: CEO
Website: http://anyzac.com/
About Company: More of a 3D Animation studio, but has some 2D projects for outsourcing. Interested to outsource pre-production and 2D animation.
For Game Development:
Company Name: CSI Studio Co., Ltd.
Representative: Jack SHin (Jong-Soo)
Position: President
Website: https://www.neoseeker.com/animal-kingdom/
About the Company: A Game and Software company, has a personal project that he wants to outsource. He has an IP for a game that was created back in 2003. He said it was a good concept about the Animal Kingdom, but the game mechanics were poor. He wanted it to be updated and be relevant again. Baron was interested in giving him a proposal for the redesign.
For Web-Toons:
Company Name: D&C Media
Representative: Sunjoo Oh
Position: Rights Division / Division Manager
Website: http://www.dncmedia.co.kr/
About the Company: Produces webcomics. Looking for collaboration but don’t know what kind.
Baron was able to talk to them last year in the Asia-Eu Cartoon Connection 2019. Baron proposed to do a Portal here in the Philippines but he never heard back. Ms. Sunjoo Oh was surprised to hear of this, so she had Baron to send the proposal again, although she said that it wasn’t a top priority for their company.
Baron with Mr. Blue Company
Baron was also able to talk to Mr. Blue, a webtoon company. But he could not understand what they needed. They needed companies with cooperation experience with Korean companies. We believe they were looking for co-producers on some projects.
In my opinion, this was a great opportunity to showcase what our industry had to offer, unlike before when we had B2B meetings in Japan and Korea, this time we had an opportunity to invite them to our studios. Although, I can sense that most of the companies that attended, did not have a clue about what and how they will do business with us. Like what Mr. Alvin Juban said about Ubisoft, they don’t need us. They have people, backing by their government and many modern facilities and equipment. They were curious though on what we had to offer, they were also impressed by the products we showed, particularly our work on The Crop Circle Warriors game. But like Ubisoft, they saw a potential for collaboration, maybe if they need more manpower since they outsource to China. I also felt Korean animation looks close to Anime but was more targeted to the Western market, so I think we would be able to business with them in the future.
Text and Photos by: AlstaireA. Sarthou
Miracle Animation Studios Inc. 