We met with Arie and Waditya, the founders of HelloMotion, during our stay in Jakarta. They met each other during their former job at a TV station: Arie had a major in public relations, and Waditya studied interactive multimedia. They are now both running HelloMotion, a fast-growing and creative business aiming to train, help and promote Indonesian designers, and to contribute to the emergence of Indonesian creators on the animation and design national scene. In order to achieve that, Arie (CEO) and Waditya (CMM or “Chief of Mastermind”) built an organization revolving around three pillars and distinct activities: design education with the HelloMotion Academy, professional community animating with KDRI (internet-based community regrouping designers) and events with the yearly HelloFest festival.
Let’s go a bit further into HelloMotion’s pluriform and creative universe!
First steps
According to Waditya, HelloMotion was created to empower Indonesian artists and designers, and let them develop and express their talents. “Our aim is to promote and grow content industry”. HelloMotion’s ultimate goal is not just to make young Indonesians capable of making animations: many Asians have the skills and are currently realizing the biggest world animation productions for Western firms. Waditya wishes that Indonesians would make their own movies and short films. “We have a lot to learn from Japan. Indonesians have a lot of potential in animation and comics.” The first step was the school, HelloMotion Academy, created in 2004 to train students on animation, visual design, digital imaging. The festival was also created in 2004 to regroup Indonesian celebrities, designers, artists, aficionados and to enable students from the HelloMotion Academy to showcase their work.
About Hello Motion Academy
Anyone can join the program, but 80% of students are aged between 18-24. These young students join HelloMotion Academy’s classes for their creative career, in addition to their college studies. HelloMotion Academy also trains students under 17 with a special program, and older people who want to change carriers ! One student quit his job at a bank and became an animator thanks to the Academy, and he eventually created his own company. No competences are required to join the class: the program includes two levels, starting from very basic. However, after completed the Level 2, all students can apply to the industry: 63% get a job 1-3 months after graduation. Many of them work free-lance, or create their own company. Arie and Whuayu’s former TV station employer sources many of its editors from Hello Motion Academy’s graduates, and they always ask for new talents. For now, Hello Motion Academy has trained over 3,000 students !
Some examples of students’ work after completing an animation course:
About Hello Fest
Hello Fest gave Indonesia its first international animation festival, and it’s gaining momentum: Hello Fest Anima 2014 welcomed up to 35,000 people. Yet the spirit of this event is not to be restricted to animation, it wishes to celebrate the entirety of the Indonesian movie making industry: animation, short movies, long movies… The purpose of this event is to raise awareness and educate the Indonesian and international public about various artistic movements, and display the work of Indonesian creators. It is striking how a small organization like Hello Motion (15 employees) is able to mobilize and leverage different communities to organize a meeting of this scale! Hello Fest seems to be a great lever to promote Indonesian animation abroad - all the more so as Whuayu attends the world’s best artistic festivals to get both inspiration and partnerships (Japan, Frankfurt).
Some of the artists' work showcased at the festival:
(Participant: Demit)
(Participant: Sheree-Evelina)
(Participant: Rizki-Pratama-Novianto)
About KDRI (The Unofficial Ministry of Design Republic of Indonesia)
KDRI was launched in 2008, and consists of an internet platform made to gather Indonesian professional designers and enable them to upload and showcase their artwork. 21,400 designers are active on the platform, and 30,000 artworks were uploaded until now. KDRI’s community can be leveraged in different ways: HelloMotion regularly launches competitions among designers, and makes T-Shirts out of the winners’ designs (they get a fee on the sale). But the major interest of KDRI is to offer companies and organizations a great pool of talents for their design challenges: they might ask for a new logo or some designer work, and designers will compete against each other to win the deal. Ex: To design electronic cards for Mandiri Bank, 1,100 designers participated in 2 weeks time!
A large part of KDRI’s business is done for the public sector: designers worked on advocacy, anti-corruption and ecological campaigns. HelloMotion also uses its platform to raise awareness and make a buzz on particular topics, by launching campaigns such as the anti-drugs or anti-corruption design competition. All of Hello Motion’s activities are supported by an intense and efficient use of social networks!
Mandiri e-money cards
Yamaha campaign
Java Jazz festival campaign
Anti-drug campaign
What now?
HelloMotion looks at other countries: creating partnerships with schools in Japan to build an advanced program, collaborating with international festivals… One of the biggest festivals in Japan agreed to expose movies from Indonesia. HelloMotion is also looking for investors to develop their activities, mainly their Academy, which requires expensive equipment to train promising talents!
Hope we’ll see Indonesian movies in French theaters real soon!