By Farrah Naz Karim
farrah@nst.com.my
PUTRAJAYA: The country’s animation and creative content future is hinged on new creative growth drivers and a more market-friendly environment that is conducive to innovation and investment. Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said digital entrepreneurs must from now adopt a more focused and coordinated effort to identify their comparative advantage in the global animation industry. He said creative content providers needed to carve a niche globally by identifying appropriate opportunities in the industry’s value chain.
“Truth be told, Malaysia cannot compete with its emerging regional competitors purely on basis of cost.
“One way of moving up the value chain is to capitalise on our rich heritage and cultural diversity to create full-fledged homegrown intellectual properties.
“This will allow our companies to gain multiple revenue streams from different sources from television, publishing, licensing and merchandising,” he said when launching the Multimedia Super Corridor’s Malaysia Animation and Creative Content Centre’s (MaC3) rendering facility yesterday.
The rendering facility is basically a computer server cluster that is used to generate CGI (computer generated imagery for animation, film and television). This technology allows local creative content companies to have the technological edge as well as lowering their costs of rendering and production.
“Malaysian-based animators can just focus on what they do best, that is developing contents rather than being sidetracked with the financial and technical platform concerns.”
Muhyiddin also said industry players required integrated skill sets developed beyond mere animation and expanding into story boarding and telling. In creating full-fledged home grown intellectual properties, animators, he said needed to continuously learn outside their niche areas and develop themselves into more complete content providers.
“To succeed, Malaysian animators have to build an ecosystem that nurtures innovation and foster creativity as well as incentives novelty. It is paramount for our creative content providers to push beyond their comfort zone, encourage productive dissent and incentivise contributors of unconventional ideas,” he said.
Muhyiddin also pointed out that while the global animation market was estimated to grow at 16.5 per cent to US$79.7 billion (RM259 billion) this year from US$68.4 billion in 2008, the animation market size in Malaysia was merely US$50 million. The government strongly recognised the potential of the creative industry with the 10th Malaysia Plan having identified Information and Communications Technology as one of the 12 National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) for the country to become a high-income nation. The emphasis, he said would partly be on creative multimedia, particularly animation for simulation, advertising and entertainment as well as games development.
He said with fresh focus on the sector, the 10MP was expected to provide additional funding to MSCMalaysia and MaC3 to help them move forward.
With the allocation, Muhyiddin said MaC3 could continue providing funding opportunities to local content creators to commercialise their content for the global market. This, he added would also enable MSC Malaysia to help develop intellectual properties by providing grants and financing to secure global opportunities in the creative content market. Earlier, at another function Muhyiddin, who is also education minister, launched the Second Asean School Games 2010’s logo and mascot — “Juara” the tiger.
The games will be held from July 12 to 21.
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