Silver Ant to complete SeeFood by June; Targeting August Release

Kuala Lumpur based Silver Ant’s high end CGI animated full length feature ‘SeeFood’ which literally means ‘seeing food’ is nearing completion. The production of the film is complete and currently the studio is involved in the audio and film transfer. Being primarily made in English, SeeFood is a co-production between Silver Ants and JCC (Al-Jazeera Children’s Channel). MOSTI has granted the e-content grant for SeeFood and Silver Ant also got the support of Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) for the project. The team of 35 animators worked on the film which is meant for a theatrical release for the period of 2 years.

Speaking to Animation Xpress Asia Pacific Goh Aun Hoe, CEO, Silver Ant Sdn Bhd says, "The film will be ready by the end of June and its release date depends on each country's distributor. We are targeting to air it between August and September of this year. Silver Ants’ Hong Kong distributor is Golden Network. Film has been sold to Luxor Entertainment (EX-USSR), California Filmes (Latin America), PT. Cipta Mutu Entertainment (Indonesia), K & Ent (South Korea), Wild Side (France); and also to China. The distributor is taking care of most of the countries beside Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Middle East.”

Pup, the lead character of the feature film is a young bamboo shark and when poachers steal dozen of egg sacks from Pup’s reef he makes it his mission to save the eggs no matter what. This mission takes Pup to the land! Julius Pup’s best friend who is worried about Pup’s safety goes to protect him and to bring him back home safe.

When asked about the challenges encountered while making this feature Goh replies, “With less then 40 animators out of which 40% are junior animators, we were faced with a challenge to see that the quality level of the production was high and at the same time we were training the Junior animators”.

Talking about MDeC's role Hasnul Nadzrin Shah, Manager, Creative Industries Strategy and Policy, MDeC shares, “We believe that SeeFood has a strong potential to make its name in the global market and more importantly highlight the capabilities of Silver Ant to the global market”.

SeeFood was launched in Cannes, France in the recently held MIPTV 2011 where distributors, broadcasters, media networks, and production companies had the chance to have a first glimpse at this major co-production.

According to Hasnul, the success of SeeFood is a testament of MDeC’s strategy to develop Malaysia’s Creative Content Industry through a collaborative framework designed to leverage the strengths of partners both local and overseas. “In case of Silver Ant’s SeeFood, the co-production with Al-Jazeera provided them with a partner who is able to share their experience in developing content of international standards and at the same tim opening up potentially lucrative markets in the Middle East and elsewhere”, adds Hasnul.

Jeffrey Chiang is the writer and Goh Aun Hoe is the director of the feature film. Though the film has not released yet but according to Goh Aun Hoe, Mahmoud from JCC have already brought up the subject of the possibility of making a series on SeeFood.

MDeC’s MAC3 facility also played a critical role in the development of this feature film. The provision of the MAC3 Rendering Farm provided them with a cost effective platform with the necessary power to render the final animation for a high definition format. As part of the overall plan, the Rendering Facility is designed to provide Malaysian content creators with a technology platform which has the ability to accelerate their production timeline and allow them to focus on the higher value added components of the content development value chain.