Les’ Copaque has consistently made ripples. These ripples hopefully will turn into a tidal wave in the local animation industry with the release of Malaysia’s first full-length three-dimensional (3-D) animation movie Geng: The Adventure Begins sometime in May (international release: 2009).

Les’ Copaque has consistently made ripples. These ripples hopefully will turn into a tidal wave in the local animation industry with the release of Malaysia’s first full-length three-dimensional (3-D) animation movie Geng: The Adventure Begins sometime in May (international release: 2009).
What started out as a four-man animation team right out from the Multimedia University with Misi Mustahak, a geriatric parody of a bunch of old folks in a home trying to sneak past their bedtime to watch Mission Impossible on the telly, is now a full-fledged animation studio. Les’ Copaque had been consistently winning awards and accolades both from the local and international arenas in the past year. Not bad for what started out in a room under the staircase of a shared office.
The pre-Les’ Copaque team consisted of the studio’s current creative and marketing director Mohd Nizam Abdul Razak, animation director Muhammad Usamah Zaid, technical and production director Mohd Safwan Ab Karim and animator Nazrul Hadi Nazlan.
The name “Les’ Copaque”, a wordplay of the local expression last kopek which means last resort, was coined when Nizam, Usamah and Safwan decided to set up a studio after gaining support from entrepreneur Burhanuddin Md Radzi who is now managing director of Les’ Copaque.
According to Nizam, history was created when Burhanuddin, through one of his coursemates, saw Misi Mustahak. Burhanuddin thought that the effort had potential to be explored and brought the three together. It was also a coincidence that Burhanuddin’s wife, Ainon Ariff, now Les’ Copaque’s creative content director, wanted to get into animation and film-making.
Before that chanced meeting, both Nizam and Safwan had been working for four months with an animation company producing content for the China market. “That was before China instated their closed door policy on animation,” says Nizam.
Meanwhile, Usamah had been with the illustrious MFX for seven months. According to Safwan, “MFX was a good experience, but we were limited then to client projects. I thought that it would be great if I could do something which I could contribute more of my creative juices.”
Les’ Copaque grew steadily from three animators in December 2005 to the now 35-strong team consisting of 11 animators, three modellers and character designers, three storyboard artists, three rendering experts, three audio engineers and other support staff. They are all now housed in a new three-storey studio in Shah Alam behind Tesco Extra, and hard at work to finish Geng by next month.
Geng isn’t the only thing on their mind, though. Last year during Ramadhan, Les’ Copaque produced a series of short Upin & Ipin mini-episodes which were well-received on Channel 9 and TVRI in Indonesia. The twin brothers of Upin and Ipin are part of the character line-up for Geng.
The episodes put up on YouTube.com have racked up over 700,000 hits to date. Les’ Copaque has even successfully sold over 3,000 Upin & Ipin T-shirts and over 1,000 VCD and DVDs through its Web site. These sales will be used as a benchmark on how to start merchandising their characters at prospective outlets.
There’s apparently a lot of interest for good animation work. Thai animation studio giant Kantana, for example, is now helping with the musical scoring for Geng.
Also, the full Upin & Ipin series will start production in May for Channel 9. The new mini-series has a unique arrangement due to the high quality of its 3-D animation: five minutes of animation will be released per week. At the end of the month, these will be combined into a 24-minute mini-series.
The unique setup at Les’ Copaque reflects a work philosophy: “We think big, but start small. We like to test the waters with small projects like Upin & Ipin before jumping in. Many have made the mistake of making the jump without testing the market first to gain feedback. It is a matter of calculating the risks involved,” explains Nizam.
Besides that, Les’ Copaque is working on several non-profit, public service announcements, including one to educate children on dangers of speaking to strangers. “Les’ Copaque will continue with safety campaigns to carry out our social obligation to the Malaysian public,” says Nizam.
The Science, Technology and Environment Ministry, Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry and Mimos Bhd have all been supportive of Les’ Copaque’s efforts to market Malaysia through its films. Mimos, for example, is handling the rendering task for Geng through 128 nodes running on Windows in its Knowledge Grid programme.
Geng needs plenty of processing muscle. One second of the high-definition animation requires 24 frames per second. Each frame can be up to one gigabyte in size. To speed up things in the future, Nizam says the company might look into making use of the over 100 remaining nodes running on Linux on the Mimos Knowledge Grid.