An enterprising collaboration
KDU UNIVERSITY College (KDU) and Kadokawa Contents Academy (KCA) announced a partnership to develop the Diploma in Sequential Art programme, slated to be launched next year.
Sequential Art is a visual narrative art form that tells a story through pictures, with prime examples being comics and manga. Kadokawa Corporation, one of Japan’s largest publishing houses, is an integrated media company with print and digital interests. In Malaysia, Kadokawa recently acquired GempakStarz Publishing, one of Malaysia’s largest and most successful publishing comics studios.
KDU will be the first higher education institution in Asia to collaborate with KCA in offering a tertiary-level academic programme. While the primary content will come from Japan, the structure is a collaboration between both organisations and the programme will be taught at KDU’s School of Computing and Creative Media (SCCM).
The collaboration was sealed in an agreement signing ceremony, represented by KDU vice-chancellor Prof Dr Hiew Pang Leang and KCA president and chief executive officer Tetsuya Koga on March 9 at KDU’s Utropolis Glenmarie campus. Also present at the ceremony were Paramount Corp Bhd group chief executive officer Jeffrey Chew Sun Teong and Japanese Embassy first secretary (Education and Science Attache) Ichiro Kuronuma.
“Through this collaboration, KDU looks forward to playing a role in developing talent for the publishing industry in this region. With the success of the Bachelor in Game Development programme, KDU has seen interest in this specific art development particularly from prospective students who visit subculture conventions namely Comic Fiesta and Comic Art Festival KL (CAFKL). The target demographic shares the same interests as game development students in manga, anime and costume play,” said Chew.
“To give you a better idea of the industry growth, the participation of Comic Fiesta Malaysia shown threefold increase from 15,293 visitors in 2011 to about 45,000 in 2016.”
Ichiro commented, “I believe this new collaboration will contribute lots of attractive content that are not only made in Japan but Malaysian style Japanese comic or Japanese style with Malaysian content.”
With a huge following of Japanese subculture in Malaysia, “Doujinshi” – self-published works pertaining to similar content interests in magazine, novels and manga is practised by many aspiring local artists.
The proposed diploma programme takes advantage of this spirit and incorporates the entrepreneurial element into the syllabus – each graduate is to publish titles frequently within the two years of study.
InvestKL chief executive officer Datuk Zainal Amanshah said that Kadokawa was an excellent example of the type of investments InvestKL was looking to seize. “Kadokawa Corp’s entry into Greater KL is a game changer for the creative content industry and we are now poised to capture a bigger slice of the global industry, valued at US$10.1 trillion (RM43 trillion) up to 2019.
“There is huge intellectual property and high skilled jobs that can be created through the collaboration between KDU and KCA which will boost creative education to support our ecosystem and supply chain to further KL’s proposition as the launch pad for creative content industries into Asia.”
InvestKL has been instrumental in initiating the setting up of this collaboration.
“Apart from ensuring our students are given a strong grounding in the programme they are studying, one of our initiatives is also to instil and cultivate their entrepreneurial mindset and abilities and as such, there is inclusion of the entrepreneurial element in the Diploma in Sequential Art programme,” said Prof Dr Hiew.
Tetsuya echoed Hiew, saying collaboration between KDU and KCA would see progression in future developing animators, novelists and character designers locally for the world entertainment industry.
The comic book industry in Malaysia is a burgeoning one and internationally, the comic book industry is thriving, as a result of the spill over interest from movie adaptations, which have dominated the Hollywood box office the past decade. This would indicate an opportunity for Malaysia to develop into a regional hub for world-class talents in comics.
As testimony to KDU’s dedication and commitment to its brand and academic excellence, the institution was recently awarded The BrandLaureate Most Sustainable Brand Award 2016-2017 for Brand Excellence in the Education – Private University College category.
■ To find out how you can hit the ground running with KDU University College, log on to www.kdu.edu.my or call 03-5565 0538 (KDU University College, Utropolis, Glenmarie) / 03-7953 6688 (KDU College, Damansara Jaya).