Animation Blog

Yesterday was a happy occasion for us.

Katakune won the 3rd spot for the Digicon 6 animation contest organized by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) for the Singapore region. For those of you who are unaware, Katakune is an original cartoon property Character Farm (a subsidiary of Mediafreaks) produced for the preschooler market. It is relatively successful, having secured broadcasting and licensing $deals across the world. You can find out more about Katakune at its official website and its blog.

To be honest I am surprised that we even got selected for the top 14 spots, much less won the 3rd place because many of the other animation entries were really good and Katakune is really quite humble in terms of animation extravagance.

One of the animation entries I was very impressed with is called Maternity – which happens to be produced by one of my animators Ishan Shukla. Maternity took one of the 10 consolation spots. I am tremendously proud of Ishan and I ceratinly thought that Maternity is quite deserving of one of the top 3 positions.

The judges are a team comprising TV, anime and manga professionals from Japan. I am not sure what their criteria is for picking the winning entries but what I can say is that they probably saw something unique enough in Katakune to give it the 3rd spot.

Animation wise, as Katakune is designed to be a preschooler cartoon, we never really made it spectacular. The animation was decent but quite basic. What we did do was spend a lot of time and effort to make Katakune’s designs, colors and rendering style stand out. I believe that was one of the key reasons Katakune had a winning position.
Below is one episode from the Katakune animated series. Enjoy!

Katakune – Christmas Hats | 3D Animation Preschooler Cartoon from Aldric Chang on Vimeo.