In 2023, Ibermedia, the biggest pan-regional co-development, co-production and distribution fund focusing on Latin America, Spain and Portugal, came to Ventana Sur to announce the 14 winners of the first funding round of Ibermedia Next, a pioneering attempting to fund development on pioneering new animation IPs which yoke artistic ambition, international co-production and cutting edge tech.
Two years later, Ibermedia Next, was back at the Buenos Aires market to present the results of Ibermedia Next 2.0. and Ibermedia 3.0 funding, another 29 projects. On Dec. 2, a Centna Sur round table, Connections That Inspire: Stories From Ibermedia Next, debated for the first time the results of the biggest attempt in history to overhaul the new tech expertise of the region’s animation industry. Moderated by Quirino director Silvina Cornillón, the panel’s speakers were four beneficiaries of Ibermedia Next $150,000 grants per project: Asdrúbal Hiutzilhuitl Rivera, at México’s Sísmica Studio; Jonatan Guzmán, a producer at Polar Studio, also in México: Chile’s Bernardita Ojeda at Pájaro, and Reyes Arnal, a producer, based at Spain’s LaMola Films.
An initiative of Spain’s ICAA film agency, tapping funding from Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, funded by a NextGenerationEU financing facility, Ibermedia Next was developed with input from Quirino and La Liga de la Animación Iberoamericana. Following five takes on the results.
Some Spectacular Animation
The Ibermedia panel was not a showcase. That said, when glimpsed, sometimes in showreels, the animation could be stunning. Guzmán showed brief excerpts from “Azul. The Last Seed,”combining stop-motion and 3D backgrounds, where its young hero, Azul, battles through a dust-storm in the search of the world’s last seed. Ana Ramírez González has already released on Instagram an entrancing work in progress teaser for “Agua Dulce,” where a baby-faced purple water droplet explores beyond its lily pond and finds a friend. Stills from “Pink Punk Delta” vary from an extraordinarily precise landscape scene to smudgy smoke at a street carnival.
Agua Dulce
A Large Learning Curve
Ibermedia Next proved a large learning curve. “It’s been an unflagging apprenticeship,” said Arnal, who participated in six projects between the three calls for submissions: “Enoki & Snip,” “Pink Noise,” “CALM (Cuentos de Amor, de Locura, de Muerte),” “Santa Sombra,” “Is There a Dead Body in the Room?” On “CALM, the directors “invited us to make a piece that mixed 3D, stop-motion, live action, shadow puppetry, traditional 2D with graphics, and simulations,” Hiutzilhuitl recalled. “They didn’t always mix easily. It was a great challenge, and we learnt so much. Now we can make these kinds of projects and it’s part of their magic.”
Creativity Boost
The high tech wasn’t, however, just for the sake of high-tech. The technology allowed us to make more art,” said Pajaro’s Ojeda. Coming from illustration, Bernardita Ojeda was “principally, almost stubbornly 2D,” she told a Ventana Sur industry audience. A project such as “Pink Punk Delta” mixes 2D and 3D, which allowed us to make a richer 2D.” Also, “the tools solve more mechanical tasks faster, allowing us to dedicate more time, enthusiasm and energy to things which we left aside because of a lack of energy, she added.
Pink Punk Delta
Pink Punk Delta. Courtesy of Pajaro
Co-Production
Producers of winning projects were tasked with making them in international co-production. That wasn’t always a slam dunk. The key to co-production, said Arnal, 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, talking about life, don’t do the project,” said Guzmán. He again learnt some lessons. Cultural differences have to be taken into account as well. “In Mexico, on a big project, a studio works through holidays and weekends,” Guzmán noted. It discovered, working with Mansalva in Madrid, that it took summer holidays off. “You have to learn how to live with others and integrate these differences into a project,” Guzmán concluded.
A Gamechanger
All in all, the funding proved a gamechanger. “A lot of projects turn on development, possible story lines, because they don’t know or experiment with different tools. Knowing that we should use them, for research and experimentation on every project, is fabulous,” said Guzmán. “To learn, you have to make mistakes, but to do so you need time and money and normally there isn’t time and money. Ibermedia aid gave us that,” added Arnal. “We used the first projects to experiment. With ‘Lucila,’ what we’d learnt with Blender and other tools was now part of our thinking about the film. ‘Lucila’ will be made totally in integrated 2D/3D. It’s the first time we’re thinking 3D, and that’s a huge change in the quantity of things which we think we’re capable of doing,” added Ojeda.
‘Pink Pink Delta’ landscape
