Promising Outlook for Local Animation
By : Hazimin Sulaiman
Tech&U recently conducted a street poll exercise to ask the general public on how digital effects and animation would hold up this year, especially local movies, TV programmes and animation. The overall response was favourable.Maulviridha Abu Bakar, systems engineer at Xybase and a big-time anime and animation fan, has noticed a marked improvement.
“We have come far since the early Usop Sontorian animation days, which by today’s standards is very outdated. I notice that montages and in-between scenes for TV programmes such as Puteri now look much better,” he says.
Maulviridha has had a working experience with companies that create three-dimensional (3-D) animation and digital special effects.
Child development expert Mec Cheah also shares similar views.
“I hardly watch any TV nowadays, and we don’t depend on such medium for teaching. But I personally have noticed more digital effects in local programmes. Recently, I saw some effects for a local ghost story on TV that are better compared to a few years ago,” she says.
For Perodua engineer Dzulhilman Sulaiman, who is also an animation and movie buff, the overall impression for local programming and movies is that local digital effects have improved, although there are some tendencies that content creators should avoid.
“If the CGI (computer-generated imagery) is used to further enhance the story to make it believable, then it’s fine. But excessive use (of CGI) can actually make things look fake, especially when something does something which it isn’t supposed to,” he says.
Public relations executive Livan Bai also sees a marked improvement in local programmes in terms of digital effects.
“There’s been a lot of improvement in the use of digital effects in local TV, movies and 3-D animation. One example is the work by Les Copaque which has been aided by Mimos’ grid computing technology,” she says.
“It’s a growing market, but we’re still at the infancy stage. With more technologies coming in, we can have a wider industry. Now it is still quite niche.”
Universiti Teknologi Mara law student Noraisyah Bahrim points out that animation such as Les Copaque’s Upin & Ipin, which was recently shown over TV Channel 9, appeal to many children and show the potential of local animation.
“It definitely means that we will be seeing the same, if not better, quality of animation this year when the full-featured 3-D animation by Les Copaque comes out,” she says firmly, believing in local talent.
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