Singapore animator Ervin Han wants to tell Asian stories through cartoons

Ervin Han founded his animation studio to tell Asian stories for Asian audiences.

He is a co-founder and managing director of Robot Playground Media – set up in 2013 – which made a splash in the local media scene with its 2015 animated sitcom Heartland Hubby.

In that same year, they followed up with an animated silent short film, The Violin, which traces the history of Singapore through the different owners of a violin. The film nabbed the Best 2D Animated Programme at the Asian Television Awards last year, and Han felt that it was testament to the fact that Singaporean stories could resonate with audiences.

More recently, they’ve produced three animated short films for Starhub’s TimeScapes anthology series — Little Red Bricks, The Girl and The Cat, and Playgrounds.

Previously, Han worked in animation development and production for over a decade, focusing on children’s animation for international broadcasters such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.

Having seen a gap in the regional animation industry, his goal for founding Robot Playground Media was to tell Asian stories closer to home.

“We are cartoon people,” Han said.

Budding industry

“The animation industry in Singapore is very young, it’s still quite nascent. But it seems like we’ve been saying that forever,” he joked.

He estimated that in Singapore, there are at least a dozen animation studios specialising in commercials and motion graphics, not counting production houses that have in-house animation teams. There are probably five to six studios that have developed and created their own original productions.

“Animation production is more costly, takes more time, and takes more manpower. So these projects are harder to put together,” said Han.

Compared to the $45,000 to $55,000 budget for a half-hour comedy or drama, an animated episode of similar length costs around $80,000. Han shared some rough figures for comparison – an episode of The Simpsons costs about US$2 million (S$2.6 million), said Han, while other international cartoons can cost between US$200,000 and US$500,000 per episode.

Mentoring the new generation of animators

Han is one of the mentors for the second run of 20/20: The Temasek Short Film Project, a film series commissioned by investment company Temasek for aspiring young filmmakers. He is mentoring the teams behind two animated shorts – Flightless Pigeons , a 2D animated allegory about anthropomorphic pigeons, and Automatonomy, a stop-motion dark comedy set in a post-apocalyptic Singapore where humans and robots are at war.

He considers it his civic duty to share his experiences with new animators – and it helps that he enjoys the process as well.

“Part of me wants to dive in and do it myself,” said Han of the mentoring process. “But creatively, I don’t try to impose my views too much on their film. What I would do is that I will question them and they will need to convince me of their point of view. I am the audience, and now this is something they have to present to the world. It’s a little different from a school project, and they have to back up (their choices).”

“It’s giving them a taste of how the real world functions, in production terms.”

Advice for aspiring animators

When asked what advice he has for budding animators, Han says, “In animation, we live and die by our storyboards.”

For him, to improve their craft, animators have to watch more films, not just animated films. “The limit of your knowledge is determined by the breadth of films you watch.”

Another tip was to find people who had complementary skill sets to collaborate with and grow one’s network.

“The most important attribute of an animator, besides being able to draw, is the skill of observation,” he added. For example, there is a difference between how a young couple and an old couple holds hands, he says.

“You are essentially bringing things to life, which is why it is very important to observe life in general — whether it is animated or inanimate.”

The short films from 20/20: The Temasek Film Project will be launched on 29 May, 2018.

Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter, having written for “Lion Mums”, “Crimewatch”, “Incredible Tales”, and “Police & Thief”. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. You can find him on social media as Optimarcus and on his site. The views expressed are his own.

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