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Forest Interactive Teams Up with MDEC for the Creativity @ Schools Award

By February 26, 2021March 1st, 2021No Comments

KUALA LUMPUR — Forest Interactive continues to play its role in nurturing Malaysia’s young, promising innovators by joining forces with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) for the recently concluded Creativity @ Schools Award. 

The award ceremony, which was initially planned to take place physically, was moved online following the nationwide MCO 2.0. Forest Interactive offered sponsorship in kind via its in-house production expertise, to ensure the success of the ceremony’s livestream. 

Johary Mustapha, CEO of Forest Interactive, expressed his delight in seeing the genuine interest and pure passion shown by the participants of Creativity @ Schools program. “The submissions for the 2020 awards were just as inspiring and impressive, if not more. While we were unable to travel to each school like we have for the last few years, MDEC was still able to successfully launch and execute both projects through online training sessions,” said Johary during the closing speech. 

Meanwhile, Adam Auza’i Mohamad Zaper, the winner of Kre8tif! @ Schools Animation Award, said that it was his first time learning and exploring animation, hence he did not foresee his video to be announced as first place. “This program was my first step into the animation world. To better understand the technicalities, I downloaded each and every video tutorial provided and watched them many times just to fully grasp the concept. Then, I tried my best to enhance my understanding by completing every task given by my tutor.” 

Adam, who previously purely showed interest in art painting, has always admired local animation films like Upin & Ipin and Ejen Ali: The Movie. “My dream is to pursue my tertiary education in creative animation to learn more about 3D modelling, creative multimedia, digital motion graphic, and more,” he continued. 

Similarly, Airil Hariz Zolkeflichampion of the LEVEL UP @ Schools Game Award shared that he was happy to be able to utilize the skills and knowledge he gained from the program. “The program introduced me to platforms and software that are helpful for me to create and develop my own game design. Within just a month, I have gained a lot of knowledge in game design development, and the tutors were tireless in assisting me to complete my project for the competition.”  

As a parent, Najwa Abu Bakar, Adam’s mother, supported her son’s passion and interest in joining the program. Both Najwa and her husband bought a new laptop with higher screen resolution for Adam to work on his graphic and animation design. “I’m not familiar myself with the creative animation and digital industry. However, Adam has our undivided support if he decides to explore the field more and make a career out of it.” 

Yuthika Peiris, Creative Production Manager at Forest Interactive, who was also one of the judges for the Kre8tif! @ Schools Animation Award, noted that the students had shown outstanding skills through their work, even with limited resources. “The effort that these students have put in was truly amazing given that they are still high school students. They managed to create something impressivedespite the fact that everyone was using the same software and almost similar assets for production,” said Yuthika 

Creativity @ Schools is an annual competition organized by MDEC aiming to inspire and nurture creativity among young Malaysians and foster interest in animation, visual effects, and game design, which hopes to lead towards encouraging more youths to pursue creative content courses at the tertiary level. The program consists of two main divisions; LEVEL UP @ Schools, a program to create awareness and interest in the game development ecosystem, and Kre8tif! @Schools, an animation program to inspire and nurture creativity among young Malaysians.  

Watch the livestream here. 

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About Forest Interactive (as of March 2021)

Forest Interactive develops scalable mobile platforms that enable mobile operators and content providers to build enriched customer experiences with highly-customizable and easy-to-use platforms. With over a decade of industry experience, Forest Interactive has expanded to include a workforce of 28 nationalities in 17 regional offices and 35 operating countries, providing innovative and comprehensive solutions to over 90 mobile operators and over 120 content partners with the capacity to reach 1.4 billion subscribers worldwide.

For more information, please visit forest-interactive.com.
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