By Chng Choon Hiong in Batam

SINGAPORE'S animation industry is still in its infancy.

But the producers behind Sing To The Dawn are hoping third time will be lucky.

After all, the first two homegrown animated movies did not fare well - both critically and commercially.

Sing To The Dawn however, has the backing of the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and MediaCorp's Raintree Pictures.

And it is based on an award-winning book that is familiar to many Singapore students here.

Said Raintree's managing director Mr Daniel Yun: 'The story is a Singapore franchise and its themes are quite universal.'

Raintree and MDA each contributed 40 per cent of the film's US$5 million ($6.85 million) budget.

The rest is from Scorpio East and and production house Infinite Frameworks.

Singapore's first two forays into the genre - last year's Legend Of The Sea and Zodiac: The Race Begins - did poorly, despite boasting voice talents like Fann Wong and JJ Lin.

Zodiac, for example, grossed only $343,000. It cost US$2 million to make.

Uphill battle

Mr Yun said he is aware that Sing To The Dawn faces an uphill battle.

'With any local film, there is bound to be a certain amount of prejudice. When it's an animated movie, that prejudice is compounded,' he said.

The movie is based on a 1975 novel of the same name by Minfong Ho, a 1997 Cultural Medallion Award recipient.

It tells the story of a young village girl who fights tradition in her patriarchal society to take on a scholarship to study in the city,

The movie, which opens here next Thursday, is directed by Indonesia-based Canadian Phil Mitchell.

While the project was conceived in Singapore, the bulk of the animation work was completed at Infinite Framework's Batam studio by a largely Indonesian crew.

Said Mr Mitchell: 'It made sense to make use of the resources that are available readily at hand - an untapped talent pool in Indonesia.'

The development, post-production, music and voice-recording, which features local artistes like Lim Kay Siu and Neo Swee Lin, was done in Singapore.

As a novel, Sing To The Dawn used to be part of secondary school curriculum but the animated movie is aimed at children aged between 6 and 12.

Said Mr Mitchell: 'We didn't want to dumb it down but we certainly wanted to aim at a certain regular animation going demographic.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Oct 25, 2008.