Jul 2, 2015

Dream Defenders" Brings International Exposure to Singapore's Tiny Island Productions

"In the '90s, I could only dream of being a professional animator in Singapore," David Kwok, founder of Tiny Island Productions, told Cartoon Brew. [Discover Family Channel is adding Tiny Island Productions' animated dimensional adventure "Dream Defenders" to its lineup, which includes "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" and "Transformers Rescue Bots," among others. The announcement was made.

"Dream Defenders is not our first introduction in the U.S.," Kwok told us in an email after Discovery's announcement this week. Our first broadcast was on 3net, which was shut down and then Hulu started airing it."

Tiny Island Productions is one of Singapore's largest and oldest CG animation production companies and has come a long way since the "early days of the animation industry. We wanted to create a company that would enable passionate animators in Singapore to pursue their dreams and make a living in this profession." Dream Defenders was founded with this mission in mind."

Dream Defenders follows teenage twins Zoe and Zane Mercer, who, with the help of a supercomputer named Zeus found in the attic of their new home, travel between the new town of Meridian and a fantastical dream world threatened by the evil woman Isela. Discovery plans to announce the U.S. premiere of the 26-episode series at a later date. [Discovery General Manager Tom Cosgrove said in a statement, "We are excited to bring this high-quality CGI series from Tiny Island to the network's strong daytime lineup. [He founded Singapore's first animation association in the late 1990s and runs the CG Protege Animation School, a training/teaching program; after leaving a high-paying computer-aided design job with the Singapore government in 2000, Kwok took the country's animation prestige, and eventually launched Tiny Island in 2007, where he landed jobs such as Sheldon and Ben 10's CGI telemovie "Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens," which won Best 3D Animated Program at the 2012 Asian Television Awards. He has won work such as.

However, "Dream Defenders" is the work of which Kwok is most proud. I hope that "Dream Defenders" will one day become an international success, keep our dream alive, and bring Tiny Island to the global stage," he said. The studio is currently working with Korea's Electric Circus to produce "G-Fighter," the first CGI series in Singapore/Korea.

In this 70-minute talk, Kwok explains how he started the studio from scratch and eventually scaled it to 120 employees and original content production.