A Malaysian Story:

The Future of Southeast Asian Animation Talent

Last September, a group of Malaysian creators started readying their animation projects for submission to a national competition. Many of them will be completing a series of creative tasks to complete short animation projects for their very first time. These programs are designed to build experience, confidence, skill and ultimately awareness of the larger animation and digital content industry. What is remarkable is that these contestants are schoolchildren, aged from 13 to 17, representing the cutting edge of future skills and talent that Malaysia seeks to build in the years and decades to come. This cohort is the future of the Malaysian digital content ecosystem, revolving around the animation, visual effects, games and new media that the Malaysian government is keen on developing as a viable and sustainable industry. In Malaysia, agencies such as MDEC (Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation) tout the importance of skills and expertise in the digital economy, including coding, digital adoption and inclusion, software engineering and for the last decade, animation and visual effects. While there are several programs designed to make the Malaysian animation ecosystem grow more robust, there is no substitute for having skilled talent to drive the industry. Hence the focused efforts towards nurturing, developing world class creative talent. Malaysia offers these programs to develop interest in careers, build better skills but ultimately is targeted to generate quality industry-ready talent. MDEC employs a varied range of talent development programs to inspire and educate, including the Enterprise Development Program (EDP) and two school-level awareness programs: Kre8tif! @ Schools that covers animation and a sister program LEVEL UP @ SCHOOLS covering game development program.

Bridging the Gap

In 2020, a new Enterprise Development Program (EDP) was launched as an upskilling bridge program designed to promote continuous learning for talent who have just recently entered the industry. Based on industry research, EDP was introduced to help individuals develop new abilities and minimize skill gaps as they transitioned into the industry. EDP consisted of a dozen upskilling programs, some with certification options and covered technical and business acumen skills. Courses ranged from finance to storyboarding, 3D animation to UI and UX. The program has seen a good take-up rate, with over 300 individuals having been or still undergoing training at this time. The EDP has been successful in several ways. First, it helps studios focus on getting new hires on board quicker by lowering the amount of in-house training required, thus shortening the process for talent to be production ready. The EDP is also a good way of community sharing since it formalizes the instruction from industry seniors who are able to share their applied knowledge and experience to a wider audience. The program also benefits cross training business skills with creative knowledge, thus widening the overall appreciation and knowledge base. Intended to create awareness and interest, it is targeted to inspire and nurture creativity among young Malaysians aged 13-17 years. This program educates and fosters interest in animation, visual effects and game design leading towards encouraging enrolment in creative content courses at tertiary levels while also planting seeds for new IP generation. Since 2016 over 1,500 middle and high school students from 330 schools across the nation were trained. Over 350 creative IPs consisting of original animation shorts and games were developed during lessons in game development, animations basics, storyboarding, narration, character building and delivering project work as part of a year-end national competition. Both these programs could only be developed by partners, including creative studios, education partners who assist with on-ground activation and technology enablers such as Toon Boom, Blender, Autodesk, Unreal, Unity and more. Beyond these animation and digital content related programs, MDEC continually engages with Malaysian universities, with various digital tech talent development initiatives. At time of print, a total of 60 colleges and universities across the nation have been engaged with 47% of these institutions being publicly run institutions. Aside from animation, visual effects and games under the Digital Creative Content sector, the other areas currently in high demand are in the Cybersecurity and the Data Economy. MDEC is a government agency behind Malaysia’s digital economy development. We support the animation and visual effects industries as part of the Digital Creative Content ecosystem and continue to support aspirations in becoming the hub for regional creative content. MDEC is focused on providing the necessary ecosystem supporting the animation industry be it talent development, funding or other enterprise support programs.

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