Animators Take Bicentenary By Storm And Launch An Industry

Batallón 52 has raised a high standard for the celebrations marking two hundred years of Mexican Independence and one hundred years since the Revolution. It will animate the festivities surrounding Mexico’s birth as an independent nation, as well as lay the foundations for a world-class animation and multimedia industry in Mexico.

The year marking Mexico’s bicentenary celebrations of Independence and the centenary since the Mexican Revolution will leave behind it an army-sized group of animation specialists.

The forces of animation march to the tune of Batallón 52. Their main barracks are in the city of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. Their first engagement is called Suertes, humores y pequeñas historias de la Independencia y la Revolución (Feats, moods and short stories of Independence and the Revolution). It is a collection of 52 animated short films on the country’s wars of liberation. The project revealed that Mexico is prepared to lay down the gauntlet, using its full arsenal of technology and its knowledge base. One of this army’s greatest victories is the Chapala Media Park, in Jalisco –covering an area of almost 35 acres with offices, sound and recording studios and sets to match any film studio in the US. Some believe Jalisco will soon become a Mexican Jaliwood.

For example, the entire production of Matrix, as well as the entire lobby of Titanic, could be filmed on Chapala’s sets. That is just for starters because the installations will be equipped to handle all the technical post-production work of any independent or commercial film, “entirely staffed by people trained in Jalisco state itself,” says Carlos Gutiérrez Medrano, producer of Batallón 52 and founder, in 2002, of Metacube, which focuses in special effects, animation and 3D.

Gutiérrez Medrano confirms that various US-based studios have already expressed an interest in renting out space in the park, which will be inaugurated in the first quarter of 2010. A second section is planned once the first is fully occupied.

Carlos Gutiérrez has recently become a key figure in persuading members of the National Chamber of the Electronics, Telecommunications and IT Industry (Canieti,) of the importance of the film industry for Mexico’s economic growth.

In 2007, the young entrepreneur became Canieti’s Western Division (Canieti Occidente) first Vice-President of Audiovisual Media and through Metacube he is now working with various unions to train up specialist technicians in constructing and moving sets in the Chapala Media Park. He also played a major part in ensuring that the state government of Jalisco bought ten hectares of land for use as backlots for movie productions.

As Vice-President of Canieti’s Western Division, Gutiérrez submitted a proposal to Víctor Ugalde, then Secretary General of the Film Investment and Incentives Fund (Fidecine), a State film fund managed by the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (Imcine), for the production of ten feature-length animated films with a view to Mexico’s national celebrations in 2010. “The final agreement was better than good. We settled on 52 shorts, each lasting a minute and a half. One half on the Bicentenary of Independence and the other on the first century since the Revolution,” Gutiérrez explains. He then raised over 3 million usd to finance the production of the shorts, with equal support provided by Imcine and the Jalisco state government, through various institutions and programs.

The next stage involved finding directors to command the battalion. The generals appointed were to be Rita Basulto, Karla Castañeda, René Castillo, Luis Téllez and Rigoberto Mora. All of them young, Mexicans, with plenty of experience and recipients of national and international awards for their animation work.

Then the magic of Batallón 52 began to work together with future animation and movie projects in Jaliwood. Paola García, the project’s Marketing and Public Relations manager, remembers that in December 2009 Canieti’s Western Division invited people to apply for a job through various media outlets in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. It was open to people of all ages, professions and trades who liked to talk and to draw. It was a tempting offer. The successful applicants could learn and receive a salary to take part in various stages of a series of short films that would illustrate some stories from the eras of Mexican Independence and the Revolution. As well as the Mexican directors, team leaders also included animators like Jason Ryan (Walt Disney and DreamWorks), Shawn Colbeck (Disney and CORE), Mark Simon (author of Producing Independent 2D Character Animation, a book regarded as “the Bible” of the animation industry), and Víctor Manuel Espinoza (the voice of Homer Simpson in the movie’s dubbed version for Mexico).

Paola remembers that she thought about 200 people would show up. But 600 came, including painters, illustrators, graphic designers, bank employees, aspiring voice-over artists, and 150 were chosen.

On a separate front, the battalion’s generals were fighting to set up a state-of-the-art studio. Eighty computers were bought and equipped with “less paper” technology where drawing can be done straight on to the monitor. Batallón therefore became Latin America’s largest animation studio.

The 52 films –one for each week of the year– were created from this mix of management, talent, knowledge and technology. They freely tell some of the stories –some amusing, others serious– that provide the backdrop to the two most important wars in Mexico’s history. The first shorts, which will be added with the remainder during the first quarter of 2010, are screened before mainstream films showing at most movie theaters across Mexico.

“Actually, Batallón 52 even went beyond its brief, by training dozens of people in using animation technologies. This will lead to the creation of new projects in the Chapala Media Park,” confirms line producer Estefani Gaona.

Over the next months, the battalion will march in a new direction and several of its troops will be working on feature length productions in 2D and 3D that Metacube is planning for 2011.

Carlos Gutiérrez adds that now the fight will continue to generate intellectual property and ideas to take shape in movies and video games.

“The idea when the Bicentenary project began was to lay the foundations for the Mexican animation industry to grow and become globally competitive. We aimed high and hit out target,” adds Estefani Gaona.

They hit several targets, in fact. Now, the shorts’ directors are receiving invitations to present their productions in places such as the International Short Film Festival Clermont- Ferrand in France, in which they took part on February 2, 2010, while in Jalisco the scene is set for an industry that will grow over the coming years.