How animators have changed in Latin America and Spain

In 2023, Ibermedia, the largest pan-regional co-development, co-production and distribution fund focused on Latin America, Spain and Portugal, came to Ventana Sur to announce the 14 winners of the first financing round of Ibermedia Next, a groundbreaking effort to finance the development of groundbreaking new animation IPs that combine artistic ambition, international co-production and cutting-edge technology.

Two years later, Ibermedia Next was back on the Buenos Aires market to present the results of Ibermedia Next 2.0. and Ibermedia 3.0 financing, another 29 projects. On December 2, a Centna Sur roundtable, Connections That Inspire: Stories From Ibermedia Next, debated for the first time the results of the largest effort in history to overhaul the new technical expertise of the region’s animation industry. Led by Quirino director Silvina Cornillón, the panel speakers included four beneficiaries of Ibermedia Next grants of $150,000 per project: Asdrúbal Hiutzilhuitl Rivera, at the Sísmica Studio in Mexico; Jonatan Guzmán, a producer at Polar Studio, also in Mexico: Bernardita Ojeda from Chile in Pájaro, and Reyes Arnal, a producer based at Spain’s LaMola Films.

Ibermedia Next, an initiative of the Spanish film agency ICAA, which uses funding from the Spanish Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, funded by a financing facility from NextGenerationEU, was developed with input from Quirino and La Liga de la Animación Iberoamericana. Following are five recordings of the results.

Some spectacular animations

The Ibermedia panel was not a showcase. That said, when you catch a glimpse of it, sometimes in show reels, the animation can be stunning. Guzmán showed short excerpts from “Azul. The Last Seed,” which combined stop-motion and 3D backgrounds, in which the young hero Azul fights through a dust storm in search of the world’s last seed. Ana Ramírez González has already released a mesmerizing work in progress teaser on Instagram for “Agua Dulce,” in which a baby-faced purple water droplet explores beyond his lily pond and finds a friend. Stills from “Pink Punk Delta” range from an extraordinarily precise landscape scene to patchy smoke at a street carnival.

A big learning curve

Ibermedia Next turned out to be a big learning curve. “It has been an unrelenting internship,” says Arnal, who has participated in six projects between the three calls for entries: “Enoki & Snip”, “Pink Noise”, “CALM (Cuentos de Amor, de Locura, de Muerte)”, “Santa Sombra”, “Is there a corpse in the room?” At “CALM, the directors invited us to create a piece that combines 3D, stop-motion, live action, shadow puppetry, traditional 2D with graphics and simulations,” Hiutzilhuitl recalls. “They didn’t always get along easily. It was a great challenge and we learned a lot. Now we can make projects like this and it’s part of their magic.”

Creativity boost

However, the high-tech was not just for the sake of high-tech. The technology allowed us to create more art,” said Pajaro’s Ojeda. Based on illustration, Bernardita Ojeda was “mainly, almost stubbornly 2D,” she told a Ventana Sur industry audience. A project like “Pink Punk Delta” combines 2D and 3D, allowing us to create a richer 2D.” Plus, the tools solve more mechanical tasks faster, allowing us to devote more time, enthusiasm and energy to things we’ve left aside due to a lack of energy, she added.

Co-production

Producers of winning projects were commissioned to make them in international co-production. That wasn’t always a slam dunk. The key to co-production, Arnal said, was to “choose good companies, but above all good people.” “I heard somewhere that the people you co-produce with should be people you want to go out to dinner with. If you can’t spend two hours eating, drinking and talking about life, don’t do the project,” Guzmán said. He learned some lessons again. Cultural differences must also be taken into account. “In Mexico, a studio is working on a big project during holidays and weekends,” Guzmán noted. Working with Mansalva in Madrid, the company found itself taking the summer holidays off. “You have to learn how to live with others and integrate these differences into a project,” Guzmán concluded.

A game changer

All in all, the financing turned out to be a game changer. “Many projects revolve around development, possible storylines, because they don’t know or experiment with different tools. It’s great to know that we have to use them for research and experimentation in every project,” says Guzmán. “To learn you have to make mistakes, but for that you need time and money and normally there is no time and money. Ibermedia help has given us that,” Arnal added. “We used the first projects to experiment. With ‘Lucila’, what we had learned with Blender and other tools was now part of our thinking on the film. ‘Lucila’ will be made entirely in integrated 2D/3D. It’s the first time we’re thinking in 3D, and that’s a huge change in the amount of things we think we can do,” Ojeda added.