PETALING JAYA: Malaysia is well-positioned to be the nerve centre for the Southeast Asian animation industry, and it should take advantage of this to provide better opportunities for Malaysians, according to the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).
Its chief marketing officer Raymond Siva said that the local animation industry created 11,590 jobs in 2018, raking in RM7.9 billion in revenue as well as RM1.42 billion in export sales.
Malaysia-grown animations and video games like Upin and Ipin, Re:Legend, King’s League II, BoBoiBoy and Ejen Ali are well known internationally and inspire global confidence in the local digital creative content industry.
“Our country has the right talent mix for the animation and creative content industry and we are close to many industry enablers who can help to equip local creators with the best tools to make their content marketable to a global audience,” Raymond said yesterday.
“To achieve this, Malaysia must quickly adopt a digital approach, and MDEC is truly committed to leading the digital economy forward and firmly establish Malaysia as the heart of digital Southeast Asia.”
Raymond said the government has also indicated its commitment to continue investing in the industry with the introduction of the Digital Content Grant (DCG) as part of the National Economic Recovery Plan.
“Through the DCG, local content creators can pursue creative, technical and human capital competencies by leveraging on international partners such as Walt Disney Studios, Pixar Studios, Animonsta and Netflix.
“This will help build a more robust local ecosystem of digitally-powered businesses that can assist job creation, business planning and market expansion.
“Ultimately, it would lead to an increase in Malaysian-owned or Malaysian-shared intellectual property within the industry.”
On the need to improve digital literacy among Malaysians, Raymond added MDEC was also working on training those in the outskirts, as they were the most disadvantaged.
He said MDEC’s #MyDigitalMaker movement was launched in 2016 and had introduced integrated computational thinking and computer science to 1.2 million Malaysian students.
“We have also seen an increase in the need for digital literacy especially since the country was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in MDEC implementing the #SayaDigital movement.”
Raymond said looking at the trends, some of the most sought-after skills in future would be big data analytics, animation rendering, advanced social selling, mobile expertise and cloud computing.
“In this era of big data, many companies are sitting on a mountain of untapped information that requires analysis which is especially useful for targeted campaigns.
“The predominance of apps also means that businesses are increasingly reliant on those with the digital capabilities.”
