Budding animators taught the benefits of saving

To raise awareness among students about the importance of saving money, and to provide knowledge and skills to would-be animators, Allianz Ayudhya Assurance joined hands with three collaborators to conduct the seventh edition of the “Thailand Animation Contest” under the concept “Bring back your lost saving habits”. 

The insurer’s fellow organisers of this year’s project were the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec), the King Rama IX the Great Foundation and the Panyapiwat Institute of Management.

Two student teams from Saint Francis Xavier Convent School were the winners for high-school entrants, while King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thon Buri provided the first runner-up at the university level. 

They won the chance to join a one-week educational tour focusing on animation in Japan.

Patchara Taveechaiwattana, chief of Market Management and Corporate Affairs at Allianz Ayudhya Assurance, said the contest had invited student teams at both high-school and university levels to create animated work by using open-source software. 

Fifteen student teams participated in the final round, divided into 10 high-school entrants and five from universities. 

“We want to encourage young people who will play a vital role in developing the country in the future to realise [the benefits] of saving money, to improve their skills and help make our society a better place. We also realise the importance of saving money and financial discipline, therefore we focus on creating a money-saving habit in Thai society. 

“Moreover, the student teams also acquire animation skills from experts and professionals in order to leverage their knowledge and skill related to the development of animation to support their experience and future development,” said Patchara. 

Nectec vice president Kwan Sitathani said the contest helped to build creativity among students, and would enable them to develop their animation in the future. It leveraged their skills in animation and helped lay the foundation for development of the industry in the future, enabling Thai students to compete in the next step. 

The contest also provided a training course for participants to acquire complete basic skills in animation to support and create their animated work, he said. 

Tansinee Laoveeratam, student leader of the So Long team from Saint Francis Xavier Convent School, a winner with its “Fireflies” project, said the project represented a dark community where the sun is dead and there is no longer any light. However, there are many fireflies flying around the community. 

A girl and some of the villagers are fascinated by the light of the fireflies and start to keep them in a glass jar. They gather the fireflies at a house located in the centre of the village.

One day, a bird believed to be a goddess appears with light. Upon seeing the light-providing bird, everyone is delighted and stops catching the fireflies, as they no longer need their light. 

But the girl is the only one who keeps catching the fireflies. During the party to welcome the goddess bird, the villagers celebrate noisily, causing the bird to fly away, and bringing darkness upon the village again. 

In the end, everyone realises that the only light they can rely on now is that provided by the fireflies kept by the girl, so the villagers start to catch fireflies again so that they can all receive light. 

The analogy is that this is just like saving money – you have to do it on your own, without relying on an outside factor like the goddess bird to do it for you.

Tansinee said the contest was extremely useful, providing her and her team with the opportunity to learn about financial discipline and gain knowledge about animation development, with the knowledge acquired providing the foundation for students to develop their skills and enter the animation industry in the future. 

The So Long team spent three months developing its winning project, she added. 

Meanwhile, Sutakorn Sameenoi, student leader of the Sarakhan team from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thon Buri, which was awarded the first runner-up prize for its “Gold Eater” project, said the contest was an important opportunity for students to show their animation development after skills training and workshops.

It also taught animation students to be patient, as animation is a very complicated process, he said, adding that it would serve as an invaluable incubator experience for students, as well as pointing the way for those eventually becoming start-ups in the animation industry.

The Sarakhan team’s story is about a swordsman who longs to buy a precious item in a shop. He realises that he does not have enough money to do so, but he happens to meet a rich and beautiful witch and starts to beg her to buy the object of his desire. 

But, instead of giving him what he wants, the witch hands a bag to the swordsman. He opens the bag in the hope of finding a wealth of gold coins, but a giant emerges instead and starts to eat what money the swordsman has. 

Every time the swordsman opens the bag in the coming days and weeks, the giant – truly a gold-eater – keeps gorging on his money, making him more and more frustrated. 

But he eventually decides that the giant – in the story an analogy for a money or savings box – has actually helped him to save the money he needed in the first place, and so he uses it to buy the item he longs for so much.