An­i­ma­tion has been a part of the T&T land­scape for over a decade. The An­i­mae Caribe An­i­ma­tion Fes­ti­val–one of the Caribbean's longest run­ning fes­ti­vals and the on­ly one of its kind in the re­gion, cel­e­brat­ed Caribbean an­i­ma­tion at the end Oc­to­ber.

Giv­en the grow­ing need for lo­cal eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and more im­por­tant­ly, the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal cre­ative in­dus­tries, An­i­mae Caribe pre­sent­ed a plat­form for an­i­ma­tion and video game de­vel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­als in T&T and the wider Caribbean, said Camille Selvon Abra­hams, a lead­ing Caribbean an­i­ma­tor and founder of the An­i­mae Caribe Fes­ti­val.

She be­lieves that "as with the de­vel­op­ment of any in­dus­try, this is the em­bry­on­ic stage. There is al­ways a dis­par­i­ty be­tween where you think you are and where you ac­tu­al­ly are in terms of de­vel­op­ment and busi­ness readi­ness.

"We have iden­ti­fied some gaps that need crit­i­cal at­ten­tion for ex­am­ple, in­dus­try fo­cussed train­ing, in­vest­ment in lo­cal IP and long-term in­vest­ment and sup­port for small busi­ness­es in this sec­tor.

"With re­cent fo­cus on Small Is­land Econ­o­my by in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion, IDB and World Bank, this is an amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to throw an­i­ma­tion and game tech­nol­o­gy in­to the are­na for se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic dis­cus­sion."

Selvon Abra­hams along with a num­ber of lo­cal an­i­ma­tors have pro­vid­ed feed­back on the po­ten­tial of the in­dus­try, the cur­rent work ca­pac­i­ty of an­i­ma­tion stu­dios and what's on the hori­zon for an­i­ma­tion de­vel­op­ment in T&T.

Weigh­ing in on the dis­cus­sion are Brett Lewis of Eye Scream An­i­ma­tion Lim­it­ed (Trinidad and To­ba­go An­i­ma­tion Net­work–pres­i­dent), Ja­son Lind­say, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tion Stu­dio, Rene Hold­er of Lab206, Nicholas Maxwell of Big Shiny Pix­el Lim­it­ed, and Michael Richards of Phas­traq Lim­it­ed.

State of the In­dus­try–

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Michael Richards of Phas­traq Lim­it­ed has an out­look on cur­rent pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els in the an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try that is hope­ful. He re­port­ed that his com­pa­ny, spe­cial­is­ing in Vi­su­al Ef­fects and Com­posit­ing has been get­ting "quite a bit of work" in var­i­ous ar­eas, large­ly at­trib­uted to ef­forts in brand­ing his com­pa­ny and keep­ing a rel­a­tive­ly fo­cussed skill set.

"I think now is an ex­cep­tion­al­ly pro­duc­tive time for the lo­cal (and re­gion­al) an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try as a whole. Per­son­al­ly, I have seen many more peo­ple be­com­ing in­ter­est­ed in var­i­ous ser­vices and prod­ucts from com­mer­cials to mo­tion graph­ics, to video games, to lyric videos and films. We are def­i­nite­ly on an up­ward trend."

"The beau­ty of our busi­ness mod­el is that we nev­er want to han­dle the full job to be­gin with but we fo­cus on tack­ling the parts of the project that we think would be best suit­ed to our ar­eas of ex­per­tise," said Richards.

At Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tion, this has been a par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial year both–good and bad. Ja­son Lind­say shares "the eco­nom­ic down­turn lo­cal­ly has af­fect­ed our busi­ness with lo­cal clien­tele and we've had to make ad­just­ments to fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tion­ships a bit more ag­gres­sive­ly than we'd planned. Be­fore the An­i­mae Caribe fes­ti­val last year we got our first out­sourc­ing job for a TV show on a ma­jor net­work. It was a small pro­duc­tion quan­ti­ty but it test­ed our abil­i­ty to pro­duce as part of a glob­al an­i­ma­tion pro­duc­tion pipeline. Fol­low­ing on from that, this year we've ac­quired new re­la­tion­ships with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tion stu­dios and we've done sev­er­al out­sourc­ing jobs in quan­ti­ties that were man­age­able for us. From these ex­pe­ri­ences we've man­aged to both stay afloat fi­nan­cial­ly as well as learn more and more about both our strengths and short­com­ings."

For Lab 206, an an­i­ma­tion stu­dio, which has re­cent­ly di­ver­si­fied in­to dig­i­tal and web me­dia ser­vices, their work­load can run from two to three an­i­ma­tion projects at a time–three de­pend­ing on the size, com­plex­i­ty, re­quire­ments.

"There are sev­er­al lev­els of an­i­ma­tion ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place which we can prob­a­bly sep­a­rate in­to com­mer­cial work (work for hire) and orig­i­nal con­tent," shared Rene Hold­er, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Lab 206 stu­dio.

"Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els are low, but are grow­ing," con­firmed a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Sec­ond Floor Stu­dios lo­cat­ed in Diego Mar­tin. "For sev­er­al years it's been gen­er­al­ly the same peo­ple work­ing in the lo­cal in­dus­try do­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the ad­ver­tise­ments or oth­er client work, but the num­ber of an­i­ma­tors and an­i­ma­tion stu­dios pop­ping up lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly are in­creas­ing."

"There was a re­cent down­turn, and has been quite qui­et for a bit," con­curred Nicholas Maxwell, own­er of Bigshinypix­el Lim­it­ed. "We do not pro­duce much 2D or 3D an­i­ma­tion out­side of tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tis­ing."

Maxwell too has no­ticed the signs of down­turn, iden­ti­fy­ing a de­cline in tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tis­ing lo­cal­ly as a part of what has af­fect­ed his busi­ness.

"With­in the last five years, there has been a bit less com­ing in due to an in­crease in the use of tem­plates, cost cut­ting and in some cas­es, large-scale out­sourc­ing, in ad­di­tion to lack of lo­cal tal­ent....but things are slow­ly pick­ing up with the new (na­tion­al) bud­get."

Ac­cord­ing to Hold­er, there are sev­er­al medi­um-sized an­i­ma­tion agen­cies in the lo­cal an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try with a staff of 15 or less, ei­ther on a full-time or part-time ba­sis.

"The ac­tiv­i­ty comes from most­ly ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies to gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, while it has been touch-and-go for most com­pa­nies, due to rise and some­what eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing mo­tion graph­ic con­tent. Most com­pa­nies have be­gun to hire in-house cre­ative teams to do most of the low­er-tier mo­tion/an­i­ma­tion work and on­ly hire ex­ter­nal (lo­cal or oth­er­wise) for big projects which are be­com­ing more and more few and far be­tween."