The 9th Animahenasyon Festival was held at the SMX Convention Centre at SM Aura, Taguig City last October 15 and 16, 2015 from 10:00am to 5:00pm. Normally the said festival is usually held every November for 4 days, but the Centre for International Trade and Export (CITEM) had a tie-up with the Animation Council of the Philippines Inc. (ACPI) that it was held on October this year for 2 days only. Just like in the previous years, the workshops, seminars, exhibits and film viewing are all happening simultaneously, but given the shorter time and some technical adjustments, there were delays in the start of some talks so there was some overtime from the planned schedules.
October 15, 2015 (10:00 am to 6:00 pm)
Welcoming Remarks (10:30 am – 11:20 am)
Juan Miguel del Rosario – President of ACPI
I was not planning to listen to the welcoming remarks, as I just needed to take some photos. I only caught the last few minutes of Mr. del Rosario’s remarks, because I was upstairs visiting the exhibit booths and I was waiting in one of the seminar rooms for Mr. Wada to conduct the workshop on anime drawing. After many minutes of waiting, I went down to the plenary hall where Mr. Wada was still listening to the speakers. So I ended up sitting down and listened to all the speakers.
Mr. del Rosario mentioned that at MIPCOM, about 60-70% of the works there are in 2D animation, so the Philippines still has a lot of potential customers in the international market, if it wants to push its own original content. This conference and other planned events is a preparation for December 2016, because the Philippines wants to host the Asian Animation Summit.
Animation is invited in the APEC as a green spot event, where animation works from a service point of view will be shown to show our role in the value chain in the international market.
Monchito Ibrahim – Deputy Executive Director DOST-ICT
Monchito talked about getting funding from the government, but it is not easy to get that funding. So he urged the ACPI if it has a project for financing; it should invite the concerned government agencies such as the BOI, TESDA, CHED or CITEM when it does it’s strategic planning for them to assess the viability of the project. Right now the excess funds are not used as there were no plans where to put the money. Animation is not just for entertainment, it is becoming a tool for learning in school, business, engineering and medical fields. Monchito hopes that the country can create more digital intellectual property like software and games.
Rosvi Gaetos – Director DTI-CITEM
CITEM is mainly involved in the promotion of the country’s industry in furniture and house ware for the international market. With the renewed relationship with ACPI; CITEM can be of assistance and help nurture the new creative economy. It is hoped that there will be a future collaboration to bring about a more vibrant animation industry.
Anime Workshop (11:30 am – 12:30 pm)
The workshop was suppose to start at 10:00 am and end about 12:00 pm but it was already 11:30 am before it started; since Mr. Wada stayed for the welcoming remarks at the Plenary Hall. I was not planning to stay at the workshop, since I am not an animator, I was just there to take some photos and write few sentences about it. I thought Mr. Wada was going to start the drawing workshop right away, but he talked about his past, works and Japanese animation which was very interesting so I stayed for the whole duration of the talk.
Takuya Wada
Takuya Wada is an animation director, animator and character designer. He owns his own studio called Media Crew Japan. When he was still a 16 year old high school student; after class he goes to the animation studio everyday to learn about animation. His first teacher was Hayao Miyasaki. After high school, he worked in animation for 10 years and Mr. Sakura was the director.
Takuya compared American and Japanese animation, which he said was very different in thinking and presentation. When he was a youngster, American cartoons were mostly for children and there were no violence or fighting. In contrast, Japanese cartoons were for both the children and the adults, wherein for the adults there were many violent scenes.
The animation came mostly from manga comics, wherein the subjects were both for children and adults. Manga has been in existence a long time ago; it is also available in sexy stores. There are also a lot of hero characters in animation and the first hero animation that was used for television was Astro Boy. There are also many sports animation like boxing, soccer, baseball and fighting scenes. The story has a lot of emotions and the fighting was hard; so when I was growing up I like the characters a lot and I could never forget all those childhood memories.
Takuya presented the Japanese animation production chart; wherein the pre-production covers the scenario, design, storyboard and color. The production is done in Japanese animation studios, which includes the background. Both 2D and 3D are used, which now is being done mostly in tablet. But for the older generation like me, I don’t use the tablet. I fight with my weapon – the pencil, wherein I can draw thick and thin lines that the tablet cannot achieve yet. A lot of people are telling me to change to tablet, but I don’t want it since I can’t get the flavor or essence but I use photoshop to colour the drawing.
Some people like 3D better than 2D for the layouting, framing and perspective, but you have to learn to write or draw on paper, since sometimes when done in 3D, it doesn’t come out right. 3D is a powerful thing, but you have to think hard what kind of image you want first.
Takuya showed a sample of his work on a storyboard on an opening scene wherein the atmosphere was dire and apocalyptic. For the first background, there were crows flying and looking for food. There was no food to eat, no water and dead people are eaten by dogs. there was another scene, wherein a young pregnant mother was all alone and she was about to give birth at night. The scene was silent and she was breathing and perspiring hard until she gave birth. All of these very emotional 2D storyboard scenes were converted to 3D animation.
He also made the 1974 Space Battleship Yamato promotion video which had a lot of impact then but it should be rewritten and updated now. But even though there are many changes in some animation works, others will still say sorry but its not good enough.
In Japan, there are a lot of Pachinko machines (casino machines) for adults (18 years and above), the machine is like a slot machine wherein instead of coins are won, ball bearings are the prize. The Pachinko machines contain a lot of animation where both 2D and 3D are used; 2D is for the characters, while 3D is for the ships, machines, cars and the like. There are many animation titles used in the Pachinko machines, Takuya prefers to work on Pachinko projects since animation for television has a very low budget. For television, there is a lot of pictures to draw in one month wherein he experiences many sleepless nights. Compared to Pachinko jobs, the budget is about ten times the television work and the schedule to finish is within 3 to 6 months. But “Pachinko job is gambling work, some don’t like it but I like it. I like the work, it fulfills me; its like I’m being reborn.”
Takuya then showed some of his works; the First North Star which was done in 1984. The Tiger Mask, its about pro-wrestling where Takuya does a lot of gimmicks and action to show. He thinks of many ways to make it better and he approaches the Pachinko owners and gives them ideas. Then there is Fighting Joe, wherein he also showed the original celluloid (plastic like material) he used, which is over 30 years old; wherein the celluloid cannot be separated from the paper as the paint already stuck on the paper. This technology is not used anymore, wherein the colours are painted at the back of the celluloid. He compared the celluloid as the tablet in the past. Two of this celluloid samples were given away after they won it in a jack and poy game. There was no more time for the workshop as Mr. Wada said it takes 3 hours for the workshop.
Various Speakers (2:00 pm – 3:00 pm)
3D Printing: A Digital Disruptor
Cedric Ng – OmniFab 3D Technologies
Sample 3D Printer and Outputs
3D printing is enabling designers, engineers, architects, animators and other professionals to print an actual plastic model output based their 3D design on the computer. There are also 3D printing for glass and metals that are used in jewellery and accessories. The technology is fairly new and it is growing rapidly as the technology further improves. The technology has a lot of potential for modelling of prototypes in engineering, architecture, art and fashion, or any ideas that could be printed out in 3D. Cedric showed that some statistics where in 2013 the global business for 3D was $3.07 billion and by 2020 it is forecasted to $21 billion. The hiring of professionals worldwide for 3D is also increasing. In countries like China (400,000 schools with 3D printers in 2 years), Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India are going to invest many millions of dollars a year in the technology. But sad to say, in the country there are no plans for 3D printing yet. However, Cedric pointed out our country has the people with talent; his goal is to expose, educate and equip the country for 3D printing.
Creation of Pugad Baboy
Pol Medina Jr.
Pol worked abroad in Iraq during the height of the Gulf War, but after two years he quit and wanted to be on his own. It was in Iraq being bored that he started to talk with his own dog as in the comic strip, and his siblings including himself were all on the heavy side so that was the inspiration to call his strip Pugad Baboy. Animators approach him all the time wanting to animate his creation. Pol confessed that he has no experience in animation. During the question and answer forum someone asked how come his creation – Pugad Baboy is not being animated yet; to which he replied he cannot disclose any details as there is a non-disclosure agreement if there is an animation project in the works; and if there is one, it will be in 2D as 3D cannot capture the essence of his work.
Pol’s life could be described as the proverbial hungry artist. He started out doing his Pugad Baboy strips for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1988, where he only got P35 a day and after 7 years it was raised to P150 a day. During that time, a clothes washer (labandera) was making about P300 to P400 a day, that he jokingly said he was seriously thinking of becoming a clothes washer then. Since drawing cartoon strips cannot support a family, his auntie told him that he could always compile his works and make it into a book. So after 1 year, New Day Publishers published his work and he got about 15% of the gross sales. Then after 9 years, as suggested by his wife, he took the plunge and he self-published. Luckily at that time his books were being sold like Big Macs that he could pay some loans after 2 weeks. At the start, to augment his income, Pol worked for an advertising agency as a writer doing some story boards. But he quit after a few years, as he is not a team player.
In the early years, his drawing had no proportion, so his inspiration was a Marvel artist named Neal Adams. As for the humour, his inspiration comes from his siblings, cousins and his wife as they tell jokes all the time. He works at home and it takes him about 3 hours a day to finish a strip, 2 hours is for thinking (reading about the issues, researching, percolating the ideas) and 1 hour for drawing. When he has some occasion to attend in some days, he does 2 strips a day. Aside from his relatives, he immerses himself with the common people’s opinions (janitors, security guards, drivers, etc.) about the issues he is thinking about, and most of the time they have a good sense of the issues.
Aside from his strips, Pol is an independent script writer and also moonlights as a martial artist writer for a magazine. Pol resigned from the Philippine Daily Inquirer when he got into trouble with a joke he wrote about a parochial girls school. Although he apologized publicly, it was not enough for the school superiors, so he resigned and he now writes for an online news feed – Rappler.
Pol jokingly describes himself having some social anxiety disorder as he is insecure about people more talented than him. So he takes no apprentices and uses only Viber and Skype if he needs to talk with other people. But the social media like Facebook takes so much of his time that he uses it only to a minimum.
Art + Technology = 3D Animation
Siddarth Bolurker
Siddarth is a Solutions Specialist for Autodesk Media and Entertainment based in Singapore. He talked about the new features of the software Maya for 2016. He showed the best sample works all over the world who used Maya for their films, commercials, Youtube, websites and the like. He showed how easy it is for artists to manipulate images like in his example of a giraffe, wherein he just added different types of hair styles and horns in just a few seconds. Editing characters in the sample 3D creation is just as easy. He also showed that the software is capable of doing very realistic waves, water movement and smoke.
Developing and Financing Animation Projects (3:30 pm – 4:30 pm)
Tim Brooks-Hunt has more than 30 years of animation experience, he started in 1983 as an animation producer in Sydney, Australia and from then had a few years stint in Manila (Burbank Animation), Los Angeles (Marvel/New World Pictures) then in 1990 he was back in Australia as producer and head in some firms and his own (Sticky Pictures). In 2013 to present, he is a mentor and consultant.
Tim Brooks-Hunt
After his brief introduction, Tim presented the session objectives: a) choosing/creating your project, b) choosing the right medium for your project, c) the development process, d) presentation materials, e) financing your show, f) the Asian Animation Summit, g) question and answer. Tim emphasized that the topics mentioned cannot be thoroughly discussed in just 1 hour, as the topics are quite long.
There are many sources of content for your animation to come from such as books, comics, games, internet, film and television, toys and original creation. Successful books, games and other media has a proven audience, whereas original creation don’t have any yet. There is a bigger risk for investors and producers to take on original ideas, so one can expect lower rights, fees if there are any interested parties. Two reasons for developing your own animation content are: the children are brought up watching their own culture and more revenues are yours.
10 to 15 years ago, one can only show the animation creation on television and films, now there are other venues for your creation such as Youtube, Netflix, mobile apps, online games and other Internet medias. Sometimes non-verbal animation and/or short feature animation are very popular in Youtube which could be made into a TV series in the future. So you should choose the right platform for your animation project, for broad content it takes at least 26 episode half hour content. Many broadcasters expect shows to be developed for a target demographic like pre-school, school age and the age in between those bracket. School age is also bracketed, with teens as the highest bracket. The concept, design and stories must be appropriate for the age bracket chosen. You should also think about if you want to entertain or educate, but it would be not viable for animation shows to just purely instruct or educate children. The animation for education and entertainment has many formats.
Once a concept has been decided upon, the character design, location design and production design has to be made. Then sample of episode scripts and brief animation test is next. To illustrate how an animation show is produced , Tim presented his co-produced project – Pearlie, which was based on a book that was selling well in Australia and internationally. An agent approached Tim (Sticky Pictures) about Pearlie and together with a Canadian partner acquired rights of the book.
They have development objectives for Pearlie such as to maintain the original concept, to create rules as to how Pearlie uses her wand and not just wave it as in the book. Originally, the book had no other main character, aside from Pearlie; so they have to create a boy character as not to alienate the boy viewers, creation of an antagonist and cute rat characters for comedy. Tim described the main characteristics of the additional characters and showed the drawings of the different locations from where the other characters came from. The name of the character and the location have something in common, for example one character was named Opal and she came from an Australian Desert.
Tim gave some valuable tips for developing animation: be original, comedy is gold, be age appropriate, avoid too many characters, don’t make it too complicated, partnerships are everything and don’t lose your creative vision as there are many stakeholders (investors, broadcasters, directors etc.) who may want to put their own vision.
Creating animation shows for television is very expensive, it was about $300K per episode for Pearlie or about $8M for the total 26 episodes. So animated productions for TV are financed by some combination of government incentives, private equity investments, international co-production financing, international distributor investment and others. Using merchandising deals as an advance is very uncertain and doesn’t happen often. With the Canadian partner, they split the profit equally, the partner also handled the distribution.
Co-production with other countries is becoming more acceptable as with the experience of Europe called Cartoon Forum. There are treaties between or among the countries that the content of the co-production becomes local content within the countries involved. The Asian Animation Summit which is about 5 years already is patterned after the said forum. The members of the Asian Summit are Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Korea. With the summit, some Asian countries are learning to fill the gaps in writing skills and financing such as Korea with some European countries It takes time to develop skills, if there is a co-production; a country with weaker writing skills can have an understudy of writers which can give them valuable experience. With lack of animation writers with experience, Australia created programs for short animation using live action and comedy writers to develop some experience.
The summit is an effective means to help realise dreams in producing a show. For 3 days there are 3 to 4 shows shown every morning and another 3 to 4 shows in the afternoon. An individual can use this forum as a launch pad to bring his idea to reality where one is given 30 minutes to pitch his ideas with some scripts drawings and animation tests for presentation; there is no need to have a pilot episode. The pitch is made in front of investors, producers, broadcasters and other interested parties.
According to an ACPI member I interviewed: Hosting the Asian Animation Summit will take a lot of budget, since a lot of VIPs (directors, broadcasters, producers) will be flown over and back and should have a place to stay for free, aside from the many other expenses for the venue, marketing, other transportation and the like. So the ACPI will need to look for sponsors and should have pre-qualified would be pitchers who have been judged on the Asian level before the said summit can push through.
October 16, 2015 (10:00 am – 6:00 pm)
Disney Story Process (10:35 am -12:00 pm)
At the beginning of the talk, Josie Trinidad reminded the audience that taking photos, video and voice recordings of the presented materials are not allowed by Disney.
Josie was born and raised in Los Angeles, California whose parents immigrated from the Philippines. She studied English Literature at UCLA and Fine Arts at Cal Arts where she studied animation and storyboarding. Her parents want her to become a lawyer, but she pursued her passion. Josie described herself as an animation nerd, but she didn’t like comic books and didn’t even know Star Wars back then. At Cal Arts, like other students, she submitted her portfolio to Disney, Pixar, Nickelodeon and others every year. If the firms are interested, they will give you an interview. For 4 years, she never got called at school that she judged herself as one of the least likely to succeed.
After school, its almost been a year that she couldn’t find a job that her father suggested that maybe she ought to try to study to be a lawyer. Her friend suggested that she try MGA Entertainment, where Josie did some illustration for Bratz briefly in 2004. Then she applied for Disney, where there were 80 applicants, 32 were interviewed and 8 were chosen and she was the only female in that batch. She defined what artist she would like to become and where she belonged in the industry. The story test for Disney is they give you a short scenario and you have to make 200 panel in 2 weeks to complete it. Internship is about 6 months.
Before she got into Disney, an agent took a look at her portfolio and said that she was trying to be too many things; her work could be for Nickelodeon, Pixar, Disney or other firms. From then on she developed her own voice, got to know herself as an artist. She was not afraid of losing a job, she kept her integrity and stayed true as an artist. If Disney didn’t want her portfolio, she didn’t care any more as there are many other places to create art.
She has been at Disney since 2004 where she worked on animated features such as Princess and the Frog, Wreck It Ralph, Tangled, Frozen and the upcoming film Zootopia (March 2016). She worked and learned story drawing, communicating visually from Ron Clements and John Musher who worked on the films Alladin and Little Mermaid.
Working at Disney is very challenging and gratifying. One works years for one project and one has to be thick skinned, as one’s works will be critiqued constantly and sometimes it is rejected all together. She experienced that all her work for Tangled was cut. When she worked on the Princess and the Frog, she was the only female, under 30 and not white. But artists refer to her as she is the only girl for comments for that film. It is an honour to work for Disney, wherein they carry on the heritage of producing animated film classics and learn from the best in the industry. Disney now has 54 feature films, the last of which was Big Hero Six, of which there were some lows, highs, bumps, challenges and renaissance in creating and marketing those films.
Josie Trinidad
There are currently about 25 to 30 people in the story department of Disney. From when she started, there are a lot more women, minorities from all over the world. Diversity is strength, we need more people with different experiences. The story is the core of the studio, before any animation, lighting, effects, backgrounds and others; it starts with an idea, which is the foundation of films. It is hard to make a good story, and very hard to make a great story. Disney’s formula is compelling stories, believable words and compelling characters. A storyboard looks easy but is very hard to do. Josie showed part of the story reel of the 101 Dalmatians side by side with the original storyboard and there were still changes in the actual animation. A good storyboard can give the animator inspiration to create good work.
The story process starts with the script, for a 90 minute film its around 90 pages. There is a room with smart, funny people, story artists and animators sitting around a table for months where they break down, argue, critique, discuss the story. The development process takes about 2 years; where there is a ton of research and the characters are given bio datas and idiosyncrasies honed where it is almost alive. The script is broken down and they start thumb nailing. The sequence can be 1000 pages for about 2 weeks work. There are many boards, iterations which can be cut, so one has to have thick skin. The story is pitched digitally and after the pitch they go to the story room where people take notes, give opinions to improve the sequence. There are 2 facets to the process; the private – drawing by oneself and the public, where it is criticised by some people. After the sequence is approved, then it goes to the editorial where the dialogues are cut, music cut and arranged until the movie is in its entire form.
The film is shown to people involved internally (producer, director, etc), sometimes its a disaster, but its okay, as you are allowed to fail. So one goes back takes note sessions, critique , lots of cuts, re-writing, try to make new things that work. There are times that 3/4 of the movie gets cut, so what do you do. They go to a retreat to an off site meeting to rebuild the movie, the director must have a voice and the story not dictated by the committee. The director has to filter the story, what does he want to say, maybe go into another direction. The movie is like a block of marble where they have to constantly hone it. There will be 8 to 9 screening process in a span of 2 years. But if the the time table is up, they have to wrap up the work and hope that it will come out great but there are no guarantees. As head of story drawing for Zootopia, Josie and a team has to go to Kenya to do some research about animals. It was hard work, that she sometimes wants to be lawyer.
For tips to artists and students, a storyboard artist needs solid draftsmanship, solid foundation in 2D animation skills although pitching is done digitally. One has to know the 12 animation principles, can do key images, draw an appealing character, able to draw expressions and personality that are coming out of the character; a quick storyboard can be on screen in less than 2 seconds. In film making, one has to have a sense of entertainment, should be able to draw exaggerated movements, push expressions, push ideas, push drama, heighten emotion and make hard to make images real.
Action sequences are one of the hardest to board. There has to be humour, character and not be generic. According to Josie, one of the best action storyboard artist is Joe Mateo, who was from Tondo, Manila and studied at UST and now works for Disney. Although at the beginning Joe was nervous to pitch his board as he was not fluent and articulate enough that he has to drink a couple of shots of whisky to be able to present his board. She showed some of Joe’s work and explained how it was good action.
During the question and answer part, the president of ACPI – Mr. del Rosario thanked Josie for not becoming another BS lawyer or else we could have lost a great talent in animation. To which the audience and Josie had a good laugh. Mr. del Rosario thanked her that she kept her integrity and was able to share many things to the participants. Josie is on a month long vacation after spending 3 years straight in Zootopia. She is also visiting art schools like St. Benilde to share her knowledge.
Josie invited students to visit Disney’s website if they are interested in the student, internship and apprentice programs of the firm. When she was at school, there were only 3 animation jobs that she could think of , it was a character artist, background artist and animator. She didn’t know there were jobs for story artists, story analyzer and others. She advised students to read books and look for the skill one is applying for. She knew of a fine artist painter whose job is lighting for animation, since as an artist, one has to know a lot about lighting also. There are classes in pitching or acting which could improve your story telling. Find where your strengths are, it could be in modelling, layout, cinematography etc.
Various Speakers (2:30 pm to 4:00 pm)
The Actor is an Animator
Tom Rodriguez is an actor who loves to draw on his tablet during break time at his work. At home, he loves to draw in his own dark room. As a kid he loved to watch fantasy and sci-fi movies, read comics and create something different. Tom mentioned his admiration for the animated film Incredibles that he has watched the special feature in the disc many times to learn about animation. Then his family migrated to the US where he studied Digital Animation and worked in Mirror Productions in Hong Kong for 6 months. It was in 2008 that the US economy was really down, that finding work was tough, that he even considered joining the military as it was the only establishment that was really hiring. Then somebody suggested that he try out for a reality TV show in the Philippines, since then he never went back to the US.
Tom Rodriguez
Tom shared his experience in the current practice of doing TV and movies in the country. He experienced taping in the provinces in the morning and the scene would be shown that very night on television. The taping is also done for multiple episodes already. For films, he narrated that the scene that they were filming will be shown next week on cinemas. For an underwater scene with corals, the swimming pool was used instead of the real thing. According to him, these practices are already in the system, so nothing could be done about it any more. His concern is that the post production artists are not given enough time to improve the scenes, so our quality is not getting any better. With regard to animation, producers and director don’t give enough time and freedom to artists, so we cannot really produce much good original content.
Unfortunately, all of Tom’s work in the hardware was corrupted just a few days before his talk that he was forced to draw out of the blue during his talk. He hopes that in the future, he’ll be able to do conceptual art and animation as he is taking some courses in animation.
Wacom Presentation
Rommel Pastrana Celespara is the Wacom manager for the country. He mentioned that Wacom is a Japanese company with many offices around the world. Wacom’s pen technology for its tablet and computers is designed for the artist, unlike using the mouse which can cause carpal tunnel syndrome on one’s wrist if used for a long time.
Rommel Celespara
Wacom is the de-facto industry standard, 85% worldwide when it comes to artist using it for comics, digital entertainment, visual arts, industrial design, graphic design and digital photography. Rommel then showed some of his works in comics, posters and music videos to highlight the quality of Wacom.
Toon Boom Harmony
Stacey Eberschlag is from Toon Boom Canada. He has beenc coming to the Philippines for some years already and trained some Filipinos in its use way back in 2012. He held some workshops on its use the day before and he showed to the audience the features and advantages of using the new Toon Boom software.
Stacey Eberschlag
Japanese Animation Workshop (4:15 pm – 5:15 pm)
Takuya Wada repeated some of his stories and showed some of the videos the day before. He demonstrated how he draws the head shots from various angles, male, female and hero faces. He also showed how to create more dynamic action and comparing it to traditional action drawing. He said that 3D software can’t imitate the dynamic punch shot he drew as it is programmed for the normal perspective, because the perspective for the more dynamic punch is fake. He did the same with perspective, which he called more cool and another for body stance, the important thing are the main lines where you put them and from there the rest of the drawing follows. When he drew Lupin, he drew it straight using a pen since he said he drew the character so many times already. The said drawing was given to a lucky student who asked some questions in the Q&A portion. Takuya showed some of his drawings where the pencil is the best tool to show the thick and thin lines of which as of the moment that tablets can’t do.
He also showed his mask and pants designs for professional wrestlers in Japan, and some character model designs. His tip is for animators need to learn how to use live camera. One should use wide lenses, macro lenses and fish eye lenses for good perspective shots.
Miracle Animation Studios Inc. 
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