Twittering Machine

Sunday, March 21, 2010

animation for a cause


Our creative boutique recently completed animation to promote the Housing Microfinance program of microfinance institution Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc. (ASKI) and partners. I'm grateful to Dr. Joji Reyes and Gloria Guevarra of GHK International and Development for Poor Urban Communities Sector Project (DPUCSP), which commissioned the film (together with a longer telemagazine AVP), for their support and enthusiasm in the use of this medium to promote housing microfinance.

The animation concept, in fact, came from a brainstorming session with Dr. Reyes, a development consultant who graduated from UP who said she's always dreamt of an animation film showing the problem of lack of housing. As for me, it has been my dream to use animation for a cause (in previous projects, animation had been used as accents; this time, it was a separate chapter in the DVD). It was a great match!

The animator and graphics producer of this short animation is Reggie Vinluan, who was Business Manager during my term in the Collegian. (The score is by another former colleague in the paper, Pearlsha Abubakar, now known as "Isha.") Reggie and Anna took up film in the College of Mass Communications in UP Diliman, and they were part of the same batch of Fulbright scholars who went to the US for grad studies (Reggie studied animation in the University of Southern California (USC), whereas Anna took up developmental economics in Johns Hopkins). Reggie wrote such amazing articles for the Culture Section- he seemed to reinvent the English language- that I assumed writing was his main passion: I didn't find out he was also gifted in the visual and cinematic arts until much, much later (his uncle is former UP College of Fine Arts Dean Nestor Vinluan).

Animation is an ubiquitous part of popular culture- on cellphone screens, electronic billboards, TV, and the movies. Filipino animators are part of the production of many Disney films and, with developments in technology and communications, animation has emerged as one of our sunrise industries.

As for me, I've always found moving and talking images magical- among the arts, it's probably the closest we could get to the divine act of breathing life into inanimate things. To watch a concept be translated into drawings and then transformed into moving images always makes me feel the joy of discovery: it brings back the feeling of playing with Lego blocks. For this project, it simplifies a complex message and brings a ray of sunshine- optimism and hope- to a serious issue.