How Katakune was Born
In 2002, one of the creators of Katakune - Aldric Chang - visited China to get his education in 3D animation.
Why he chose China to study animation and why he switched from being a music producer/songwriter to animation is another story, but fate so determined that he went to an animation school in Beijing.
Xavier Feng - the other creator of Katakune - happened to be an instructor of that particular animation school at that time. Interestingly, Aldric was also in China for the purpose of recruiting talents to help him when he set up his animation studio upon his return to Singapore and Xavier struck him as somebody who could help him.
Recognizing Xavier as immensely talented and dedicated to animation and design, Aldric became firm friends with Xavier during his stay in Beijing. On a chance occasion, Xavier showed Aldric his collection of design artwork and animation. Out of the multitude of amazing artwork, Aldric spotted a gem.
There was something about this cute creature that made Aldric linger at it. For some unfathomable reason Aldric had a premonition that this worm was going to be the star of an animated series and he made a remarkably insensible statement to Xavier announcing his premonition. Yet this worm was without a name and just ‘one of Xavier’s many designs sitting in his computer’ at that time.
Katakune in his earliest days, all alone and without any friends
With that, he returned to Singapore and establish Mediafreaks Pte Ltd - one of the better known 3D animation studios in Singapore today.
In the next few years that followed, Aldric maintained a working relationship with Xavier whilst he focused on building Mediafreaks. In 2005, Aldric finally felt that Mediafreaks was ready to diversify and he decided to expand Mediafreaks to go into content creation. Katakune became his first digital star!
Aldric got together with Xavier (who has by now also his own studio) to co-develop Katakune into a full-fledged animated series complete with full stories and a group of other cute cuddly friends.They invested some money of their own and assembled a team of investors who enabled them to develop Katakune properly and produce 20 sample episodes. They later also received investments from the Media Development Authority of Singapore and embarked on the journey to produce 520 minutes of the Katakune animated series for preschoolers in High Definition!
Katakune was born!!! Katakune finally got his name and was officially a silkworm (he was just a worm previously and being given a proper race means a lot to Katkaune :P).
Looking back now, Aldric feels that it could have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. He had always believed in miracles and when he first started Mediafreaks, although he had no idea how he would develop a cartoon series which costs millions to produce, he knew he would get there. It was a lot of hard work and faith. And without the MDA of Singapore, the investors who believed in them and their supportive colleagues, Katakune would still be languishing in Xavier’s computer, never to meet the rest of the world.
Today, Katakune is no longer alone. He has over 20 friends in Tazzleland and he is eager to spread what he learns to preschoolers all around the world!
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