Among my favourite childhood cartoons are Disney’s The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.

Born in 1988, I consider myself and my generation exceptionally lucky to have our childhood coincide precisely with the Disney Renaissance era, in which many of the most successful and most celebrated Disney animations were produced.

In addition to the two that I’ve mentioned, Aladdin, Tarzan, Mulan, The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas are also among the classics produced by Disney in the late 1980s to the late 1990s!

I wasn’t too aware of the creative industry all this while. As I grew up, I watched all these animation blockbusters without being conscious of the immense talent, effort and difficulty in producing these movies.

I just somehow assumed that these cartoons were made in pretty much the same way as how Hollywood action movies were made. You point your camera at Cinderella or Pinocchio, they act according to script, and you sell the film. (Oh wait where did Cinderella and Pinocchio come from?) o.0

This month a group of friends and I worked part-time at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre for a 3-day event called Kre8tif! 2010.

It’s a conference organized by MSC Malaysia to kinda promote and support the creative industry in Malaysia. They’ve got a super awesome line-up of speakers made up of the most prestigious people in the industry globally.

A ticket to the conference costs over 300 bucks but all we have to do it to handle the receptionist counter during registration, handle inquiries, help participants scan their tags during entry, and gain access to the conference for FREE!

Our friend, Pauline, works in the company that handles the registration and reception service of the event, and so for that simple job we get paid a hundred bucks per day, free meals and t-shirts and freebies, and we could literally attend any of the talks that we wanted – free!

… Of course, as long as we finish our job first! Registration starts at 8AM everyday and so usually by 9AM everything is done. And our routine job would be to be at the conference halls before a session starts and scan the RFID tags of whoever enters the hall, for attendance recording purposes. And then after that, we’re done!

During the registration, a number of speakers that we dealt with were actually super famous people in the industry and had specially flew in from the US that morning to give talks. But we, ignorant fools from an entirely different industry, could have just talked to the next great Hollywood producer but not even know it!

We treated everybody like commoners and nobodys! LOL!

One of the first talks that I attended was given by Shawn Kelly, who was lead animator and worked directly with Michael Bay on the Transformers series. He was also involved in animating other many blockbusters like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow!

Kelly was exceptionally audience-friendly and humble, and he even posed for photos with his ‘fans’ in the audience when requested! Not many speakers were willing to do that!

Next I slipped into a presentation by star screenwriter David Freeman, who has written scripts for Sony, Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM and more. Freeman’s talk was an extremely interesting tour on “The Secret Behind Pixar’s Magic”, where he analytically and technically points out the secrets behind what makes movies like Wall-E, Toy Story, and Finding Nemo stick to the back of your head for years.

Other speakers throughout the three days include Jason Manley, who artists and designers will immediately recognize as the founder of ConceptArt.org; Stephen Davis, President of Hasbro Studios, Silas Hickey, creative director of Cartoon Network; Patch Khan, director of digital media at Hewlett Packard, and many many more.

If I write any longer this would look more like a marketing brochure than a blog post, therefore I’ll stop.

One last speaker mention, here’s me with Din Altit, who was creative executive at Sony Columbia Pictures where he worked on films such as Ghost Rider, Casino Royale, and The Fog.

Our chat began with his little confusion over the local ‘nine-layers kuih’ served during tea time… I learned that now he owns his own production studio in LA and is producing an upcoming movie about Thai kickboxing! Haha since I am in kickboxing for over a year now, this is a movie that I would never miss!

Besides, I know the film producer FTW!

It was such a new experience being at an event such as this. After attending three days’ worth of talks, at least now I know a jargon or two in this industry! And not to mention the yummy free buffet meals~~~

On the final night there was an awards ceremony called the Kre8tif! 2010 Awards, which was organized and given out by MSC Malaysia to local talents in the creative industry. Now I’ve learnt more about the companies in Malaysia doing this kind of stuff and the importance of supporting them blah blah…

… and… OK but in the end the free dinner is still what mattered the most!

Honestly speaking, the standards of our local creative companies are nothing compared to what they’re doing in Los Angeles. But hey, we’re still new in this and I think we should all give them our full support. Who knows? Maybe one day our local studios will produce something more than just Cicakman!

Cheers to our very own Malaysian Creative Industry!