Competition is tougher, money is tighter and demand has slackened but animation studios in the country think they can soon return to the glory days and perhaps even exceed them by producing animated features of their own.
"There are a lot of contracts in the pipeline," says Marlyn Montano, president of the Animation Council of the Philippines, remarking that many of the larger animation studios here are getting more orders.
Local animators have proved themselves over the past 20 years, doing work for Disney, Hanna-Barbera, Warner Brothers and Japan’s Toei Animation.
Philippine studios helped produce such popular cartoons as "Kim Possible," "Static Shock," "Dexter’s Laboratory," "Dragonball," "Sailormoon" and "Slam Dunk."
The Board of Investments optimistically projects that the local animation industry could gross $32 million this year, Montano says.
However this still would not match the $40 million that the industry grossed in 2000, just before it went into a slump.
"There is still a future in animation but it is not as bright as five years ago when most of the subcontracting work of most of the major studios was being done here in the Philippines," says Nestor Palabrica, general manager of Toei Animation Philippines Inc.
Local artistic talent, high educational standards, fluency in English and a familiarity with Western culture attracted foreign animation studios to the country in the 1980s.
But things got tougher in 2000 for various reasons.
The demand for cartoons suddenly contracted worldwide. Even the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States had an effect with some projects being abruptly canceled.
The rise of the animation industries of China and India also provided some unwelcome competition. Ironically, many of the animators there had been trained by Filipinos.
"They had the technology but they didn’t have creative people so they started getting animators from the Philippines," recalls Grace Dimaranan, president of Top Peg Animation.
She says Filipinos were hired for well-paying, six-month contracts there "but after six months, they were out of a job."
Local studios lowered their rates to stay competitive while some have shut down including the former industry flagship, Fil-Cartoons, once a subsidiary of Hanna-Barbera.
But industry leaders say things are looking up.
At the suggestion of a trade department official, the studios formed the Animation Council to showcase the entire industry and to encourage cooperation.
Industry leaders are confident that artistic ability and creativity and the more adaptable Filipino culture will help even the odds against lower-cost animation from China and India.
Local animators boast that some of their old customers are coming back after finding that cheaper studios could not match Philippine standards.
The studios have also expanded their capabilities from the most basic production work up to the pre-production and even post-production fields, such as conceptualization, character design and storyboarding.
Philippine studios are already coming out with 3-D animation in the vein of "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo," and several colleges are offering courses in animation.
Montano believes that the industry’s success may come from indigenous animated products for the world market rather than relying on subcontracted stories from abroad.
"Hopefully, we will get one flagship project. Just one flagship project. That will put us on the map again," possibly in five years, she says.
Dimaranan’s company, Top Peg, is already producing a wholly-created children’s educational cartoon, "Dragonfly Patrol," which airs on a local television channel.
Despite its Filipino setting, she says the show has been sold to an Indonesian buyer who will dub it into Bahasa. — AFP