Cedfit creates link between IT artists and academe

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Educational Development Foundation for IT (Cedfit) is now linking the IT creative sector and the academe to strengthen the animation, graphic arts, gaming and film IT artists in Cebu in its bid to make Cebu known as the “Innovation Island” in Asia.

Cedfit managing director Bonifacio Belen announced that a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) was initiated recently to link the creative IT departments of different companies developing these kind of products with the academe, in order to sustain the supply of good animators, computer gaming developers, graphic artists, and film developers.

Initially, Belen said through the FGD, it was discovered that creative IT companies are desperately needing academe linkage in order to provide an effective curriculum guide on the actual job requirement of an animator or computer game developer, for instance.

What happens now, is most of the universities are offering a generalized courses in IT, specialized skills such as animation, is not be aggressively pushed, although there is a profound need for these kinds of skills in the world, including a promising future for an animator in the Hollywood.

This time, Cebu will find out who the artistic IT specialists are, and who those IT professionals are whose expertise are into hardware and only software development.

Since Cebu had positioned itself as an IT hub in the Philippines, efforts in quantifying the number of artistic IT professionals not been seriously pursued. According to Belen, with the help of some sectors and organizations like the British Council-led “Creative Cebu” program, the Gaming Association in the Philippines, Animation Council in Manila, and the creative IT firms in Cebu, quantify the number of good creative IT specialists in Cebu can be done immediately.

Also, academe is urged to provide a good creative IT courses program, such as introducing majors that focus on harnessing the skills of creative Information Technologists in multi-media, thus a major on animation, computer gaming and the like are highly suggested.

At present, Cedfit is still trying to link a good partnership with the creative IT firms in Cebu, and the leading universities that are offering broad courses in IT including those colleges that offer Fine Arts and Architecture that would lead to a good supply of creative IT individuals in Cebu.

An industry situation report released by Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis (IDEA) in partnership with Bayan Telecommunications Inc., revealed that the industry is currently suffering from challenges of brain-drain, lack of ready manpower pool, and the perceived gap between the demand and supply for creative services in the country.

Although the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Animation Council of the Philippines have implemented a joint effort to boost sustainability of the industry, this has to be re-enforced further to accommodate the expected demand of 25,000 artists in the year 2010.

According to the report, the threat of artists’ migration has continuously haunt the industry, as incentives offered abroad are set to attract artists from the Philippines which depletes even more the already scarce pool of labor force.

In Cebu, VersaGrafx Designs Philippines Inc. established its presence here in 2005 to take advantage of the untapped good artists and animators in the province. The Cebu offshore office is the first facility opened by the company outside of United States.

The company establishes a conceptualization and design facility for cinema standees, and other promotional collaterals for Hollywood movie production companies in Cebu.

The Philippines has been working on cartoon flicks known worldwide, these include; Tom & Jerry, Adams Family, Scooby Doo, The Mask, Power Puff Girls, The Incredibles, Dexter Laboratories, Dragonball, The Jetsons, among others.

Walt Disney and Warner Bros, are among big animation studios worldwide, that have high regard to Filipino artists, the report said.

With this, Belen said there is a need for Cebu to put its step up ahead of other areas in the country, or Asia, banking on Cebu’s position as the number one emerging BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) sites in the world.— Ehda M. Dagooc