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SALADIN : The Made In Malaysia Animation |
What is SALADIN?
SALADIN is a 3D animation for television series. It will be a 13-part series.
The story is based on the real-life stories of a Muslim hero warrior
named Salahuddin Al Ayubi (or might be written as Salah Al-Din Yusuf Ibn
Ayyub). In the West, it is also popularly known as Saladin. The events happened during the
Holy War in the 12th Century. His mission is to conquer Jerusalem and
also to unite the Muslims world. For those who have watched the movie "Kingdom Of Heaven", you might already familiar with this character.
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The Production
Year 2000 is the year Saladin is first announced to be produced.
The producer of this animation is MDeC which stands for Multimedia Development Corporation which is part of the Malaysian Government unit.
Government give their trust to MDeC to fulfill this national project and make it
a slam-dunk in the animation world. The budget for the whole TV series is expected to be around RM10 million. The production has already started since May 2004.
14 people in the Visual Development Team in MDec did the pre-production work and continued by
Silver Ant company (located in Damansara) which concentrate on the animation
part and Imaginex Studios (located in Bangsar) which concentrate on the audio
and sound effects. And the best thing is, both are local companies.
MALAYSIA
BOLEH!! I'm quite inspired by the idea of the man behind the scene who is
Kamil
Othman, the vice-president for MDeC's Creative Department. His idea of this animation is to
show to the world that Malaysian talents can do any animation products even if it is not
originated from Malaysia. Means that Malaysian talents can work globally
and still can delivers the best. |
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The Trailer
Its major achievement is when it's six-minutes trailer has won the Best Technology category at
SICAF (Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival) Promotions Plan
competition among a group of 10 finalists. What a major breakthrough!
When I first seen the trailer, I was flabbergasted by the quality of the animation. It took three months for Silver Ant
to complete the trailer and two weeks for Imaginex to add the sound effects.
Very first class and I can't imagine that one day Malaysia will be able to produce this type of animation.
Below are some of the screen captures of the trailers. To watch them,
you can go to the Saladin's
Official Website.
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Everybody knows that to produce an animation, either
it is a movie or series, it cost a lot of money and face a lot of risks.
You can read about the challenges and difficulties encountered
by the Saladin project team in here.
Despite the problems encountered by the Saladin project team, hopefully, we all can watch the whole series soon.
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| Links and
Sources
1. Saladin Official Website
2. Highlights
of Saladin in MSC Website
3. Articles
"Weaving The Magic Of Saladin" in The Star
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This
article is created by VREMPIRE.
First created on 27-Sept-2006.
Last
updated on 28-Sept-2006 |
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