My fascination of the animated film since childhood has changed into the desire of wanting to create them myself. My inaccessibility to the actual equipment used to create animated stories back then has led me to improvise on certain aspects but still be able to create one nevertheless. I believe problems are challenges and that limitations actually open windows to new, creative and more interesting possibilities.
What I value most above everything else in my stories is the message it carries, and how it is delivered to the audience. I try to not make my messages in-your-face as I highly regard my audience, believing that they can connect the dots for themselves, or if they wish, create their own interpretations of my stories, which usually consist of several levels, and each of which can be seen depending on one’s experiences in life.
Later on I discovered that my country has been one of the main producers of the many cartoons I have grown up with; a bittersweet discovery as one may say as I found out that my country has not been given public credit it has deserved for almost three decades. My country, alongside other third worlds is actually a sweatshop: cheaper labor for producing these films, and is one of the industry’s secrets that it would rather keep quiet about. I have further realized that despite the fact that we have been making animation for others all this time, we have yet to possess an animation identity we can distinctly call our own. It is from here that I have found my path: to create a Filipino animation identity, and help the world recognize it.
