Animae Caribe digitalco-operative launched

The Animae Caribe Festival, which is normally a highly interactive four-to-five-day experience, has been forced to adopt a few changes.

The festival's founder and artistic director Camille Selvon said this year's event suffered from funding but was supported by regional groups pooling their skills and resources together to make the event possible.

“This year, our efforts have been heightened by the involvement of our counterpart developmental collectives from Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname, St Lucia as well as TT, the associations whose membership are the animators, writers, designers, gamers, game art designers, technology experts in the region. This was as a result of lack of funding to put on the Caribbean’s longest-running regional animation festival,” Selvon said in a media release.

The group of Caribbean stakeholders pooled resources and the 19th edition of Animae Caribe Animation and Digital Media Festival will take place from October 30-31 with an online experience that will be heightened by interactive lectures, demonstrations, industry leadership sessions, and a virtual reality (VR) closing party featuring Freetown Collective in a 3D Animae Caribe virtual party space.

Selvon said to make the festival a reality for 2020, the team formulated a digital co-operative where services in technology, sound, animation, website app development, virtual reality services were bartered in exchange for the creation of a digital collaborative space.

She said the Animae Caribe Festival has always embodied a Caribbean regional approach to the growth and development of the animation and game sector. The festival platform continues to be a critical one for the nurturing of the industry in the region, and small Caribbean start-ups were critical for its survival and the collaboration allowed for shared resources and the creation of a shared Caribbean digital platform for global conferences in the future.

The unique collaboration includes Jamaica Animation Network, Guyana Animation Network, Google Women Techmakers, The Creative Tech Hub Caribbean (Suriname), TT Animation Network, Steady Image XR Media Group based in Miami and ShopCaribe – eCommerce platform.

The festival will feature over 20 seminars and Selvon believes that the time is right for the formulation of Caribbean Digital Corporative and collection of animators and technology ICT experts in the region; a one-stop platform where resources, expertise and data can be shared and hired.

For more info: e-mail info@animaecaribe, or www.animaecaribe.com