There is a sense of urgency in Multimedia Development Corp’s (MDeC) efforts in “creating content for the world!”, as its slogan clearly outlined. Clearly, MDeC is eager to see more local successes with foreign partners in an otherwise nascent underdeveloped industry.
With South Korea and India taking up a lot of the outsourced animation work from big studios such as Cartoon Network and Walt Disney, Malaysia has a lot of work to do to get a piece of the action.

Yes, the global animation industry is stitched together with lucrative outsourcing contracts. For example, South Korean animators did it with the current best-selling children’s cartoon Ben 10 (about a boy who can transform into alien monsters to beat his enemies), whose intellectual property is owned by American creators. Even the zany, Western-laced humour Ren and Stimpy show was done by a South Korean company called Rough Draft Korea.

In a bid to leapfrog the industry, MDeC recently set up a co-production fund worth RM75 million to co-produce animation and computer games with foreign partners.The fund offers a maximum grant of RM5 million per deal. MDeC is targeting 15 projects over the next two years and is currently evaluating three animation projects.
With only a handful of local studios possessing credible portfolios to co-produce internationally, this plan is considered ambitious. But such efforts do present a lot of benefits — if they succeed.

“With co-production, our local players are exposed to the whole value chain, including marketing, distributorship and merchandising. These are opportunities to gain experience and create jobs for our people,” explains Hasnul Nadzrin Shah, manager of Creative Multimedia at MDeC.
Co-production is considered one rung above outsourcing in the creative content ladder. Malaysian companies will be able to place their brands in foreign countries through such ventures. A local animation player believes that this fund will be successful due to the nature of this industry, where the funding pool is always dry. According to him, the last few millions are always the hardest to get when companies search for funds. This is where Malaysian companies can come in.

While RM5 million seems a lot in the local context, it is really a small sum after conversion to foreign currency and considering the high cost of animation projects. MDeC’s own effort to co-produce Saladin, the animated television series, with Al-Jazeera requires the former to fork out RM15 million for the 50:50 venture. This means that our industry players will have to content themselves with being involved in small projects.
However, Hasnul says co-production can go up to a 70:30 ratio, depending on how the deal is brokered. He also hopes this would attract more private investments as seen in the recent success of local animated movie Geng: The Adventure Begins.
Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, CEO of MDeC, hopes that one of the spillover effects of co-producing will be the transfer of knowledge through master classes. A master class is a hands-on class in certain disciplines of arts where established experts share their knowledge. MDeC plans to conduct future master classes in its yet to be launched Malaysian Creative Content Centre (Mac3).
Mac3 was to have been launched last quarter, but has been delayed to November presumably to coincide with the yearly International Advisory Panel meeting to allow Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to unveil it.

Nevertheless, Hasnul assures that Mac3 is already in operation with the housing of a few companies. Mac3 will house facilities for creative content production, including accommodating the co-production fund ventures. MDeC is also in talks for facility sharing with a US$20 million (RM70 million) studio owned by KRU Productions. KRU’s studio, siting on 15 acres in Cyberjaya, will be equipped with sound studios, 3D animation and visual effects facilities.

Badlisham, however, is mum about the details of Mac3’s facilities until its launch.
Overall, the co-production fund is a good initiative by MDeC to spur the animation industry. However, with only a handful of players strong enough to co-produce, it is hoped that the funds will be evenly distributed and fully maximised. Now, if only MDeC could get Mac3 up and running, that would be even better.

This article appeared in netv@lue2.0, the technology section of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 771 Sept 7 - 13 2009