By Sam Rillstone
The Golden Pig, a 2D animated show has been selected to be a part of Stories x Women at the Annecy Animation Festival. Photo: RNZ/ Sam Rillstone
Twelve New Zealanders have spent the last week at the largest festival in animation.
Annecy Festival is an annual week-long animation festival which sees all the big players in the world of animation from Disney to Netflix, Warner Bros and Sony flock to the French city of Annecy. Many give presentations of upcoming projects, while others along with smaller animation studios pitch their work to try to get projects off the ground.
RNZ spoke to three creators heading to the festival hours before they flew out.
Kate Goodwin is a creative producer for The Golden Pig, a 2D animated show aimed at six to 11-year-olds. The show was selected to be a part of Stories x Women, a programme aimed at increasing diversity of voices in animation globally.
The show is the brainchild of Malaysian-raised Hweiling Ow, who Goodwin said wanted to bring more context to her culture.
"Hweiling has written this for like the 11-year-old girl who's growing up in a place that doesn't necessarily look like her, but she's part of that culture."
The Golden Pig centres on three kids aged six to 12 and follows the myth of the animals in the Chinese zodiac. A great race was held to decide which animals would be in the zodiac, in which the rat tricked the cat into losing. The cat, furious, then begins to take the spirit from all 12 zodiac animals which causes all adults to become lifeless. The three protagonists realise they must collect and save all the zodiac animals in order to bring back balance to the world.
Kate Goodwin, creative producer for The Golden Pig. Photo: RNZ/ Sam Rillstone
Goodwin, who has embarked on her fourth Annecy trip, said Stories x Women was a mentoring programme which aimed to help guide animators to pitch their projects in the best way possible to the big streamers.
"I haven't gone with a project before to try and kind of sell it. We've had probably like four different mentoring sessions now, which have been amazing.
"Anything in the media world or content creation, the more varied stories you have, the more interesting it becomes. The programme that we're doing is focused on supporting women that live in places that don't have so much support in the animation world."
Co-founders of Wellington-based animation studio Floating Rock Garrick Rawlingson and Steff Parker also have some projects they are looking to pitch at Annecy.
Like many at the festival, Floating Rock will be trying to get the attention of large studios like Disney, Netflix and Paramount.
Rawlingson, who has been to the festival many times after growing up in France, said they also wanted to connect with as many small studios as possible.
"Just to get some vendor work in New Zealand and movie magic here. That's what I think Kiwis are really good at."
The co-founders of Wellington-based animation studio Floating Rock said the festival showed the growth of animation and the changing perception of the genre. Photo: RNZ/ Sam Rillstone
About to embark on her first trip to Annecy, Parker believed the top-secret projects Floating Rock were taking to Annecy, were really fresh.
"We haven't seen anything like this before, so that's why we're so excited to show, you know, a little bit of it, to get people more excited about us and get our name in there."
Rawlingson said the annual festival showed the growth of animation and the changing perception of the genre.
"For so many years, animation has been seen as something for kids. New property is coming out like Love, Death & Robots on Netflix, Spider-Verse or Arcane that are more geared towards teens and young adults. I think that's where we want to expand because the stories get deeper, there's more chances to explore, think a bit further and not have everything have a happy ending."
