Animation: Chile won the Oscar and made “Star Wars”, and Peru? Expert tells what we need to grow

In Chile they know this. The neighboring country has been promoting this art that is an industry for decades and for which, in 2016, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for “Bear Story”, which tells a stylized version of the drama of families separated by the Pinochet dictatorship. Precisely, the studio that created the short developed and released an episode of “Star Wars: Visions” in 2023, a series that shows different interpretations of the most popular science fiction franchise in the world.

What is done on the continent can have global reach. How to replicate this in countries like Peru, with an emerging industry? We talked about that and more with the Colombian Simon Wilches, creative director of Titmouse, studio that made series such as “Star Trek: Lower Decks”, “Big Mouth”, “Agent Elvis”, among others. Wilches personally directed the animated segments of the Disney+ series “WandaVision,” as well as the imagination of the character Kat in “Euphoria,” who imagines two members of One Direction in an erotic fantasy. He, who is in the country for Promperú’s Peru Service Summit 2023 event, spoke with El Comercio about what the industry asks of animators, why the medium is special, the role of Latin America and what Peru needs to be on par with the greats of the region.

Traffic Light, animated short by Simón Wilches.

—What things does animation allow, in terms of creation, that other types of art do not allow you?

Personally, the way I conceive it is a medium that combines the narrative capacity of cinema with the plastic capacity of painting and illustration. It is an art that has infinite possibilities, but usually what we see most are stories for children. What is happening today with the growth of all platforms is that the full potential of animation is already beginning to be explored. One begins to watch movies that already have a slightly more adult tone, television series that touch on more complex issues of the mind. And at the same time it allows for a very unique treatment of aesthetics, like the new “Spider-Man,” which is completely different from, for example, Pixar’s “Toy Story.” Thanks to this plasticity, a unique tone and a very “authorial” treatment can be given to the stories. That is the potential that other things like television or real-image cinema sometimes cannot achieve thanks to the fact that they are already recorded in photography and not in plastic.

—And in your opinion, what is the most valuable thing an animator has for studios to want him for their teams?

His point of view. For me, and especially for my career specifically, it has been approaching animation from a very unique point of view. And that uniqueness comes from being Latin American, basically. I come from a very small city in Colombia and I grew up around a number of indigenous, Afro-Colombian influences, political issues that have always been present in my country, and at the same time very much in love with television and animation. When one begins to compress all these elements in a drawing, in a small animated sequence, the point of view begins to emerge and it is inevitable, because it is not like taking a camera and shooting, but rather it has to be produced with the hands, in 2D in 3D.

—Now that you mention your Latin American experience, how can someone who comes from a small market, say Peru, gain experience to be internationally competitive?

There are two avenues. I grew up at a time when the Internet was just emerging, I had to be very curious, hunt for influences, for software. The short films that everyone has on YouTube today had to be found in gaps on the internet. When I managed to jump from Colombia to the United States to do a master’s degree, I began to study with people from other countries who were three times as advanced in technical terms. I arrived older than them and said “I stayed.” But one thing that they didn’t have, that they had grown up with very formal education and access to all the media, was hunger that I had, that made me not the last of the litter. Today I feel that with social networks everything is already very close at hand, I worry that when people are given all the answers, sometimes they don’t learn what questions to ask. Today, with the topic of artificial intelligence, it is even more so. Apart from being aware of technology and learning to draw, the main thing that differentiates a Latin American is hunger and resourcefulness, because one learns to function in quite chaotic environments. If you manage to turn that into something positive, it will be the strongest armor you have to face the world.

—So leaving Latin America is no longer the only option for local talent to grow professionally, right?

Completely. There is always a language issue, you have to try to understand English. Programming and software languages, too. But obviously after the pandemic it became very normal to work remotely. And many of us animators did it before the pandemic, right now I’m dealing with a Chilean. Part of what I have tried to do from my studio is connect with many Latin American artists because there is too much talent in Argentina, in Chile, Peru, Colombia. Now I’m going to the Summit because I met many Peruvians and for me it was impressive, I want to know more. This year I have been invited to several animation festivals and I am realizing that there are some super strong industries forming in Latin America. What now follows, I believe, is the issue of point of view, that it is not Latin American studies telling stories from other latitudes, but rather telling their own stories and managing to distribute them to a global audience.

—How would you describe the work that is currently being done in Latin America in terms of animation?

Well, I was a jury for the Quirino Awards and what I began to see, in terms of animation, is diversity. Because one sees a number of stories and above all with a high-level execution, internationally competitive and very foreign to what one consumes most naturally. What really gave me hope is that there are many people fighting for that vision I talked about at the beginning. It is complex, because they once again have to co-produce with four or five countries, which makes productions slower, but it guarantees that these authors are telling the stories. Obviously, that’s not the way many people proceed. Everyone is waiting for a streamer to come along and buy their story, but to attract those more commercial platforms or places it is always necessary to sacrifice a little bit of vision; which is not bad either, they are ways to deal with it. But for me what is being made in Latin America are very diverse products both in theme and style.

—How has streaming, which has been boiling for almost a decade, changed the requirements towards animation studios?

That is a complex topic because it was an incredible opportunity when it started, it broke the traditional way of distributing. I thank him for “educating” many people in terms of what animation is beyond children. One began to see animation in stories for adults, to accompany real image products. It expanded the visual vocabulary of the traditional public and that makes many independent artists begin to attract attention within a commercial space. The way in which people saw and consumed content also became very bad, due to the issue that they could have the entire series in a single click when making animation takes time and requires a lot of love and attention, it cannot be produced at speed. So the challenge was that it began to compress production times a little, so it began to generate as a way of making content, let’s say, more for YouTube than for a traditional project. And there is something positive in Latin America, where we have never had giant budgets and infinite times to produce as other countries have had. If at this moment we are faced with an industry that is not ideal, who has the tools to produce on stages?

—I recently spoke with an animator who works in Japan and I asked him something that is talked about a lot on the Internet, that when you see an excellent animated sequence it is because they have put a lot of money into the animation, and he told me that more than the budget, What matters is having a talented team. Does the same happen in the West?

Yes of course. There are author’s animations, which from start to finish are made by a single person, but there is a saying: if you want to go fast you go alone, if you want to go far you go with people. I started out being very independent, I did everything myself, and it wasn’t until I became a director that I learned that potential was only magnified when you worked with a team of people; There are people who know how to design much better than me or who can interpret my ideas in a very different way. That immediately makes the product grow, then comes the technical development. If I want to do an action sequence, there are people who have that mastered much more because they have a slightly more interesting point of view. Every time you add all these values ​​into a single product, the product goes very far.

—Animation requires a lot of the human eye, the vision that one wants to tell. How are they seeing artificial intelligence in the US industry?

We are in the phase of fear and not only the animators, but it is not a new issue. I have been in this industry for almost 20 years and if I compare the computer programs I used before with those of today, there are many functions that were previously someone’s job. This process of optimizing functions has existed for a long time, what is happening is that now there has been a media boom on the subject and people are very scared. Suddenly there are jobs that are going to be replaced, yes, and there are also things that governments have to consider as long as they cannot leave all people without work, but once we overcome this initial phase and understand the regulation of all these tools in People’s existence is so respected, it has been a very good tool that hopefully helps release creativity instead of replacing it.

—Last question: Peru has been making animation for years, in fact the first 3D animated film in all of Latin America was made here, “Pirates in Callao” (2005), but its creations still do not have a global impact, unlike, say, Chile. , which has won the Oscar for Best Animated Short or has even participated in “Star Wars: Visions.” What does a country like Peru need to further develop its animation industry?

It is a complex topic. Chile has also been doing animation for a long time, I don’t think it’s free for them to be notable. Argentina is also very good. Personally I feel that to achieve an international impact, to begin with, you have to train authors so that it happens like in Mexico: Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro. People never recognize industries, what they recognize are authors and points of view and it seems to me that what Chile has done very well is tell that hard story, “Beast”, nominated for an Oscar. These authors have to be supported by teams that can execute the vision and for that support from governments is needed. Only in the United States, France and Japan are the industries so strong that they can sustain themselves, but in the rest of the world we need governments to understand the importance of telling those stories. And the authors have to understand that the goal is not to copy the successful models of the United States, why copy Pixar, if it already exists. What they have to do is the Peruvian version of Pixar and how we become different so as not to compete with a giant, but to create our own.