Animation's new league

Abu Dhabi: The next generation of Arab cartoon enthusiasts have much to look forward to with 12 graduates from the Cartoon Network Academy (CNA) venturing into the job market last week.

The students celebrated their graduation from CNA's inaugural one-year animation programme at the academy, which is the first of its kind in the world for the global network.

"Since we became a free-to-air channel we've had greater access to audiences and with that comes greater responsibility of entertaining them," said Michael Carrington, general manager of Cartoon Network Arabia.

"Our partnership with twofour54, through CNA, was an opportunity to nurture and identify talent from this region rather than having to parachute talent in from other parts of the world."

The purpose of the world's first CNA is to nurture Arabian talent to eventually create home-grown animation content for the region. The academy was established in partnership with twofour54, dubbed the UAE's centre of excellence for Arabic media content creation.

"In essence twofour54 is looking to develop a skilled pool of talented employees to become part of the region's media industry," said Wayne Borg, deputy chief operating officer of twofour54. "There are a lot of young people in this region who watch cartoons and animation but little original content produced that speaks to them."

He added the graduates have and will develop animation skill sets that can be utilised for content development across different platforms such as television, smart phones and gaming — in a virtually untapped market.

New batch admitted

Carrington said the network opened its regional development studio earlier this year and has already employed three of the academy graduates.

Since its first graduation last week, the CNA has enrolled its second cohort of 12 students, marking the success of the programme.

For an approximate price of Dh60,000, in one year students will graduate as full-fledged animators with opportunities in the field ripe for their picking. The course focuses on the two main principles of 2D character animation and story development. During the programme the students tend to be drawn to and find their feet on either side.

Graduate Nassma Al Bahrani, 22, a Canadian-Iraqi, landed a job with Cartoon Network's regional development studio as production coordinator. She will now be working on a team responsible for developing original regional content for Cartoon Network.

"This job is a great opportunity and exactly what I wanted to contribute to the region," she said. "It's so much more exciting than producing a show that already exists or that doesn't have a concept built and based on the region's culture and values."

She added that in her new position her ultimate goal will be to contribute to the creation of an animation television show or series that goes global.