Ram Mohan. Photo by Mark Langer.

Day Two Dawns
The next day began with director Kunihiko Ikuhara presenting a program of his work on Sailor Moon and La Fillette Revolutionnaire, Utena. Ikuhara gave an overview of Japanese animation history, starting with the beginning of animated television series and the shift from imitating what he called the "Disney style" to the manga style of expression. According to Ikuhara, manga has created a unique animation culture in Japan, with its own expressive traditions. This was demonstrated during a Japanese/American co-production about ten years ago, where there was a difference over a shot lasting about five seconds. The Japanese staff wanted the only movement to be the character's mouth, while the Americans wanted physical gestures. Ikuhara claims that American animation is always intent on generating greater audience appeal and thus, creates characters in constant motion, accenting the fantastic and differentiating animation from live-action cinema. The Japanese are influenced by manga, where a character is shown in a still image while the reader reads the dialogue. Ikuhara then went on to discuss his work on Sailor Moon and Utena, which differs from traditional "girl series" in that fighting, rather than romance, is the central premise. Ikuhara also outlined the importance of merchandising to Japanese animated series, where story lines are devised to introduce new products, such as the best-selling Sailor Moon pendants, modeled after those in the series used by the characters to transform themselves. The high demand for such series has created a shortage of properly trained workers in some job skill areas, such as the use of digital technology, as over sixty locally produced animated series are screened in Japan each week.

Left to right: Frank Saperstein, Kathleen Helppie-Shipley and Karen Goulekas at the Singapore Animation Fiesta. Photo by Mark Langer.

Next, I introduced a program of recent animation from Canada, ranging from films and ads from Dynomight Cartoons and Cuppa Coffee Animation, to high-end computer generated productions from Mainframe Entertainment, Nelvana and Alias/Wavefront. This was followed by a discussion of local Singapore animation, and then a presentation by Karen Goulekas, former Digital Domain employee who most recently supervised Visual Effects for Godzilla. Goulekas, tanned and rested from a month-long vacation in Thailand after finishing Godzilla, spoke of the difficulties resulting from coordinating the efforts of different production teams (animation, CG and effects, lighting and rendering, compositing) and using incompatible software programs to create the effects on the film. The highlight of her presentation was a detailed account of the Brooklyn Bridge sequence, which Goulekas characterized as "the sequence where we pushed the envelope." The goal of the special effects animator, said Goulekas, "is to seamlessly mix models, live-action and CG." What lies in the future of computer animation? Said Goulekas, somewhat tongue in cheek, "Photo-real humans--you'll scare the shit out of all the actors!"

The author, Mark Langer, on the left, with Jean-Michel Blottiere. Photo courtesy of Mark Langer.

Our Final Day
The final day of the festival began with a combined program by Jayne Pilling, who discussed European avant-garde in terms of how the films differ from mainstream animation, and Jean-Michel Blottiere, the director of Imagina, who presented the most recent winners from this European computer graphics and animation festival and spoke about current developments in computer animation internationally. Ricky Orellana, of the Mowelfund Film Institute, presented a fascinating look at Philippine animation, revealing an active independent scene in a country better known as an inexpensive labour outsource for American television production. The final presentation was by David Flack, vice president of Creative Services of MTV Asia, who showed highlights of international production from MTV's local Singapore service.