SERI KEMBANGAN, June 25 — Do you remember wishing — when you were younger — that you could make cartoons? Well, Noramin bin Mohamad Daud (Amin Daud) is living the dream... he opened an animation studio with his wife and another partner.
Amin Daud started drawing cartoons from age five. In his case, it was Dragonball and he would use pencil on paper or even the wall! “When I was at that age, I hadn’t started using colours,” said Amin Daud who eventually moved on to watercolours as his preferred art medium.
The 30-year-old graphic design graduate now runs TudiduT Studio together with his wife Ilaharyani binti Maarof (Ila). If you’re wondering about the studio’s name, it stands for two dudes and dudette doing 2D animation in Malay. The third dude though had to pull out eventually due to work commitments.
Started about two and half years ago, the studio covers mainly 2D as well as Cartoon Network-style animation. They also do illustrations, comic and graphic novel covers.
As Amin Daud’s forte is drawing, he concentrates on illustration, animation background, character design and concept design while the animation is undertaken by their in-house animator.
They also collaborate with other partners like R&D Studio and Jakalll Studio to do the animation. “When I was really young, my style was more like manga but now it’s skewed towards European animation,” he said.
Ila takes care of the management of the studio. Assisting them is a team of seven who work on various projects simultaneously.
In 2012, the studio won a grant from the MSC Malaysia Intellectual Property Creators Challenge to make Impian Remi which targets children aged six to 10.
Ila explains, “It’s an educational and entertainment animation programme. Something like Dora the Explorer where it focuses on educating but there is also drama and adventure.”
The idea to pursue an animation about different jobs came from their former partner who realised that there wasn’t anything like this in Malaysia.
The main character, an 8-year-old boy called Remi, is unsure about what he wants to be. His teacher gives him a task: search for different jobs.
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his sees him and his sidekicks, Loli and Mr Zoro, explore a different occupation in each episode. The jobs range from dentist, fireman and even an animator.
“When we released the episode on YouTube, we got comments like ‘Oh, this is what it takes to be an animator? It’s not so easy!’”, said Ila who was the one who did research on each occupation.
“For Impian Remi, we already released six episodes on TV Alhijrah and also on YouTube under Monsta’s account. We are still working on 20 more episodes. We target to finish at the end of 2018 for all the 20 episodes,” said Amin Daud.
What brings immense joy to Amin Daud is the fact that Impian Remi is his own intellectual property. It’s up to his own imagination so it’s not boring for him. Also, it’s not under anyone else’s orders so the team is free to explore creative possibilities.
In the beginning, it was challenging for the couple. Both of them took up freelance jobs to help sustain the business. “I used to work on two to three things at the same time so it was quite tough. I was an app tablet designer in Cyberjaya for about four to five years.
“I did app design and interface for publishing firms that wanted to switch to digital. After I finished working there, I would come and continue the work here.
“Only after we got the grant I told myself that I need to focus so I quit my former job and started working here full-time. I believe we need to focus to move forward, otherwise it’s tough,” said Ila.
Another challenge was their studio’s location. “Our previous location was in Dengkil and we were located next to a car workshop so sometimes it was a bit noisy but we had to sacrifice because of finances,” said Amin Daud.
As part of his freelance work, Amin Daud also did a digital artwork of the Proton Saga car for Dumpster, an art space that promotes local talent.
When asked to come up with something Malaysian, Amin Daud thought of cars, like the first Proton car, so he drew his version of it. His dad had a Proton Saga so that was his inspiration.
The studio also collaborates with other animation studios to do animation background. Currently, they are working on an animation with the working title, Jungle Majig, that is all about Malaysian ghosts which is targeted towards the English speaking audience.
“We don’t want to call them ghosts. We call them monsters because we don’t want to scare the kids who are watching. So the characters we developed are cute. Instead of having a giant, we have hantu galah and other Malaysian monsters,” said Ila.
The project was presented in Australia where two to three broadcasters expressed some interest in the animation. This month, they presented the trailer at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market held in France.
“At the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market they have many big players there so they will be previewing the show there and if anyone’s interested, we can start with the full production of the animation,” added Amin Daud.
Naturally, the couple are also keen fans of animation. SpongeBob Squarepants, The Amazing World of Gumball, Dora the Explorer, Gravity Falls, The Regular Show are just some of the shows that Amin and Ila like to watch.
“I like The Amazing World of Gumball because the storyline is hard to predict so it’s really good,” said Amin Daud. As for Ila, she likes The Regular Show because the ideas are crazy... one day it’s like that and the next episode is something else.
TudiduT Studio
Website: http://tudidutstudio.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TudidutStudio
You can also view Amin Daud’s artwork under https://www.facebook.com/amencodai.ad/
