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Monday, February 17, 2025

Making Animation sustainable in T&T

by

20111030

Forty-four year old Camille Selvon-Abra­hams is in­deed a trail­blaz­er in the field of An­i­ma­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and cer­tain­ly the Caribbean. As one of the coun­try's well known an­i­ma­tors, she now jug­gles many hats of Pro­gram Co­or­di­na­tor and Lec­tur­er for the Diplo­ma in An­i­ma­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), CEO of Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tion Stu­dio, Fes­ti­val Di­rec­tor of Ani­me Caribe and most im­por­tant­ly – wife and moth­er to four chil­dren.Selvon-Abra­hams mood is one of ret­ro­spect and re­flec­tion, as she con­tem­plates a fu­ture where can step back from the crazi­ness of her sched­ule nowa­days and proud­ly ad­mire the growth of the an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try through the next gen­er­a­tion of artists. "One of the rea­sons I pushed for An­i­ma­tion on the Uni­ver­si­ty syl­labus is be­cause I did not know about an­i­ma­tion un­til I went to school" she said.

She de­scribed her­self as an "artis­tic child" al­ways draw­ing on any sur­face she could put her hands on. It was no sur­prise there­fore, that she de­cid­ed to pur­sue a Diplo­ma in Com­mer­cial Arts at the John Don­ald­son In­sti­tute on leav­ing her al­ma ma­ta, St. Joseph's Con­vent. Camille ad­mit­ted to work­ing a se­ries of jobs in many ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­nies as a graph­ic artist while be­com­ing part of the fash­ion com­pa­ny, The Cloth, as a fab­ric de­sign­er.Dur­ing this time, she be­came a young moth­er of a ba­by girl and knew that she would have to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion to make a bet­ter fu­ture for her­self and her daugh­ter. She de­cid­ed to go to Eng­land with her now hus­band where she would get mar­ried and at­tend Gold­smith Uni­ver­si­ty in Lon­don. There, she read for her de­gree in Me­dia and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, spe­cial­is­ing in An­i­ma­tion. Ac­cord­ing to her, dab­bling in An­i­ma­tion was a com­pul­so­ry part of the syl­labus and she quick­ly fell in love with the art. "I'm an artist first, but an­i­ma­tion added an evo­lu­tion to my art be­cause it was no longer sta­t­ic" she ad­mit­ted.

On grad­u­at­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty, Camille de­cid­ed to re­turn to home. "I was put in my place when I came to Trinidad "she said can­did­ly. Giv­en that her ca­reer path was rel­a­tive­ly new and peo­ple did not un­der­stand it, the naive an­i­ma­tor quick­ly re­turned to Eng­land in 2000. Selvon- Abra­hams de­cid­ed to free­lance and there start­ed the first an­nu­al Ani­me Caribe fes­ti­val. In Eng­land, it was called "The Word" where peo­ple were free to ex­press them­selves through po­et­ry, song and an­i­ma­tion. "What stuck with me is how much peo­ple were amazed to hear a Caribbean/African voice in An­i­ma­tion". In 2002, she re­turned home once again to share her knowl­edge and fill the gap in the bare­ly ex­is­tent an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try lo­cal­ly. She de­cid­ed once again to put on an­oth­er in­stal­ment of Ani­me Caribe which fea­tured renowned di­rec­tor/ac­tor Robert Townsend who host­ed a se­ries of work­shops. The sub­mis­sions for an­i­ma­tions al­so widened ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly as per­sons from Lon­don, Ja­maica and Trinidad all took part. "It cre­at­ed an ex­cite­ment and buzz that this [an­i­ma­tion] was ac­tu­al­ly pos­si­ble" she re­vealed.

Al­ways on the move, Camille would fly back and forth be­tween Trinidad and Eng­land un­til the now moth­er of four and her fam­i­ly set­tled in Trinidad in 2005. Since then she lec­tured at UWI (Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre) as part of the Film and Video Pro­gram. A cou­ple years lat­er UTT came a call­ing. "I was called in­to a meet­ing with Ken Ju­lian who want­ed me to set up the An­i­ma­tion Pro­gram which would al­so fo­cus on En­tre­pre­neur­ship. The Ani­me Caribe would al­so be in­clud­ed in the pro­gram. I re­al­ly could not refuse that" she said. So far, the pro­gram has pro­duced two grad­u­at­ing class­es with a blos­som­ing of the Ani­me Caribe Fes­ti­val since the TTFC, then TID­CO start­ed to spon­sor and sup­port the fes­ti­val. Her in­roads in­to the pro­gram de­vel­op­ment does not come with­out its chal­lenges how­ev­er. "An­i­ma­tion is a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try. Tech­nol­o­gy is grow­ing just as fast so the chal­lenge is to keep up with the pace of the soft­ware and equip­ment" she said.

With her Full Cir­cle Stu­dio fam­i­ly busi­ness, she is busy churn­ing out work for Min­istries and pri­vate com­pa­nies which def­i­nite­ly keeps her hands full. She al­so in the trains of her staff, who will some day take the reins in the run­ning of the com­pa­ny. Selvon-Abra­hams has al­so been in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised for her work. In 2009, she be­came the re­cip­i­ent of the In­no­va­tion in the Area of An­i­ma­tion Award from the Caribbean Tales Film Fes­ti­val.So how does this su­per­woman jug­gle all her roles so well? "I have a hus­band who takes care of the home al­though he has his own busi­ness and I'm very hap­py he has tak­en up the man­tle. Its not tra­di­tion­al, but it works for us" she said. "I'm at the stage where I have worked hard for ten years and I would like to take a step back. A lot of pos­i­tive things have hap­pened be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go have be­come the pi­o­neers in An­i­ma­tion in the Caribbean" she said.Camille Selvon-Abra­hams has def­i­nite­ly been a mav­er­ick, de­ter­mined to make An­i­ma­tion sus­tain­able in Trinidad and To­ba­go and has been suc­cess­ful thus far. Al­though she will nev­er turn her back on how far she has tak­en An­i­ma­tion lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, fam­i­ly life is still a pri­or­i­ty. "I have chil­dren and a fam­i­ly and that's im­por­tant al­so. I love what I do, but I'd like oth­er peo­ple to take the reins and run with it. Its time to pass the ba­ton"


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