CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology (Cedfit) will start nurturing a unified group of animators in Cebu to strengthen the province’s niche in animation.
Cedfit already started animation trainings last month, and second batch will be next month, in partnership with the Animation Council of the Philippines, and a company called “Studio 2”.
Cedfit executive director Jun Sa-a said after establishing the series of training to provide a pool of good “animators” in Cebu, Cedfit will work closely with existing animation company in Cebu, such as VersaGrafx Designs Philippines, among others.
There are already several outsourcing companies in Cebu that are doing outsourcing works for Hollywood production firms, aside from Versa Grafx, Bigfoot, and the Japanese company Hirota Paint Industries (HPI).
According to Sa-a it is important to strongly develop an animation group in Cebu, to quantify the number of good Cebuano animators doing works for famous production outfits in Hollywood.
VersaGrafx Designs Philippines Inc., earlier announced that it is going to set up the first Graphic Arts Academy in Cebu to hone local talents, and strengthen the investment-drawer creative industry here.
VersaGrafx, which has been doing conceptualization and designing jobs for film promotional materials of Hollywood movie production companies, will be setting up a 100-seat Graphic Arts Academy soon, as Cebu is hit by tremendous exodus of graphic artists, landing high-paying jobs in Canada, Dubai, Singapore and the United States.
VersaGrafix creative director Junny D. Mahilum earlier said that there is a need for Cebu to provide a good pool of talented and world-class graphic artists as this kind of talent is now becoming one of the most in-demand jobs in the world, yet is probably “overlooked” by some educational institutions.
The six-man team of VersaGrafix had been working for several movie post production collaterals, including Brad Pitt’s movie called “In Glorious Bastards” by Paramount Pictures and Weinstien Studios; Transformer 2; The Punisher, among others.
These Cebuano graphic artists had done the conceptualization designs for Hollywood box-office hits such as Rambo, Spiderman, Jessica Alba’s-The Eye, Legally Blond-2, Iron Man, Saw IV and 200 more hit movies.
The company’s designing process involves a review of cinematographic materials and on-location shoots and still photographs to be used in the conceptualization and design.
Hirota Paint Industries (HPI), on the other hand, is doing visual effects editing, and other animation solutions for hit movies like G.I. Joe, Ninja Assasin, Australia, among others.
HPI recently announced that it is expanding its operations in Cebu to develop more graphic artists in order to cope with the increasing demand.— Ehda M. Dagooc