Animation attracts youth but still highly expensive

Leo Wahyudi S, Contributor, Jakarta

A comical-looking tiger with red and yellow stripes is casually walking in the jungle, when he spies a cute tiny deer, playing cheerfully in a clearing.

The deer seems completely unaware that the tiger is nearby as he leaps cheerfully among the bushes.

When the tiger bounds out of his hiding place, jaws wide open in anticipation of devouring his prey, the deer realizes the terrible predicament he is in.

But sometimes brains are mightier than brawn.

The deer fools the tiger with a quick-thinking tactic and succeeds in getting away from the starving tiger. The end.

The animation showed at the workshop last weekend received a hearty round of applause from the audience, who mostly laughed through the production showed on a large portable screen. However, despite the interesting characters and visual effects, members of the audience said the sound was poor.

"It lacks clarity," groaned one.

But for Febry, a second year student at Santa Ursula Junior High School in Bumi Serpong Damai, Tangerang, the animation impressed him so much that he became obsessed with the idea of becoming a good animator.

"I'm interested in animation because it amazes me how a series of drawings can make pictures move like a film," said the winner of the drawing competition put on by Gasa Studio and TV Animation in observance of National Youth Pledge Day on Oct. 28.

Febry said he realized that very expensive equipment and advanced technology were needed for producing good animation.

"I have to save my money so I can afford to buy the equipment one day," he said.

Animation can cost a small fortune to produce. Greg Singer, a fan of animation and a columnist in Los Angeles, California, said animation was a high-risk business from an investment point of view as lots of money could not guarantee that a film would be entertaining and successful with a good storyline.

Despite all that is involved, animation has good prospects in Indonesia, said animation producer M.S. Gumelar.

"Many potential investors back away from it after realizing the overpriced equipment needed for its production," he said, adding that this was the main problem.

He praised the youths' high motivation to launch animation productions as for years releases from the United States and Japan had dominated the industry here.

An enthusiastic animation student, Maxmillan, 20, said he had been learning to develop characters, modeled from American and Japanese favorites, which would be able to go international.

"However, it's not that easy as we have too many ethnic groups to be able to select one that could represent the whole country's character," he said.

Gumelar said he had been training 30 talented animators in Surabaya, Malang and Jakarta to study two-dimensional (2D) animation or 2D hybrid animation. The new technology would help beginners to reduce the excessive cost of owning animation equipment.

The option enables one to combine manual drawing and digital technology, which is less expensive but quicker compared to the costly traditional way of producing animation.

The more effective technology goes through the whole process of making animation. It includes arranging a theme setting, storyboard, drawings, lip sync editing, coloring, special effects and dubbing.

"This new process can run for only some Rp 20 million (US$2,174)," he said. The price is far cheaper than the common- held belief that a 2D production normally costs between Rp 400 million and Rp 600 million.

TV commercials are the targeted market for animation production, such as cartoons and motion graphics, as 80 percent of the animation jobs are done for advertising companies.

Despite the promising future, Gumelar said animation was still in its beginning stages here.

"We aren't ready yet to create any marketable breakthroughs," he said.

Gumelar collaborated with local folklore expert Kusumo Priyono to produce Indonesian storyboards. He also worked together with another businessman to promote animation production for the market.

Hopefully, audiences here will some day be able to watch local animation made by new talent such as Febry and Maxmillan, and perhaps their work will go on to win international recognition.

Gasa Studio and TV Animation, Indonesian Folklore Development and Conservation Institution; Nyi Ageng Serang Building 6th floor; Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said Kav. C22, Kuningan, South Jakarta