Production company Story Play Media Ltd. is inviting character artists worldwide to win prizes and an opportunity to work on the first animated feature film emerging from Trinidad and Tobago through The Caddy Club 2D Character Design Competition.
The Caddy Club is a micro-budget movie about a group of young troublemakers who become crime-fighting superheroes when they discover a magical portal at a youth golf program. The Character Design Competition challenges artists to bring two of The Caddy Club’s lead characters to life through original concept art, and is made possible with contributions from Nestle Trinidad and Tobago Ltd., the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company (FilmTT), the Jamaica Animation Nation Network (JANN) and the Trinidad and Tobago Animation Network (TTAN).
“[The Caddy Club] will generate jobs, increase experience and talent in the sector and create a cultural work that can act as an expansion to the awareness of the local industry and local creativity, since an original animated feature has yet to be achieved,” said TTAN President Jessica Yawching.
The competition’s host, Story Play Media, is the company behind Big Man Dan, a cartoon short licensed by U.S. on-demand entertainment companies Studio Anansi and Toon Goggles Inc.’s SQAD, in addition to being distributed by Jamaica’s Caribflix, multi-regional GT Network and Story Play Media’s proprietary VOD site, storyplay.tv. Big Man Dan character concept artist and animator Shane Young Sing went on to work for multiple Emmy Award-winning Atlanta animation studio Floyd County Productions after wrapping up his contract with Story Play Media.
Artists who enter the competition are invited to take inspiration from The Caddy Club cast and story to create character concept art spotlighting the movie’s cultural themes and its themes of presenting girls in positions of leadership. Prizes include cash, a month’s worth of Nestle products and a chance to earn a paid gig working on The Caddy Club movie. The competition’s entry deadline is November 30, 2020. Register at storyplaymedia.com to enter.
The Caddy Club synopsis: When 12-year-olds Keisha, Ryan, Akil and nine-year-old Jamal find themselves in trouble with a policeman, they’re sent to an after school golf program for at-risk kids. Determined not to miss out on the fun, six-year-old Tameka (voiced by Leisha Imani) stealthily sneaks onto the bus that takes her older friends to a golf course. While learning to play golf, Keisha (Selena St. Vincent) hits a ball into the roughs, and she and Ryan (Jarlon George) discover a secret hole with an invisible portal to an ancestral realm.
Joined by Jamal (Sloan de Leon) and Akil (Osei Blake), they cross over to the magical realm where they meet with ancestors who bestow upon them gifts of love, courage, cunning, wisdom and speed to fight crime lords who want to recruit young children to join their street gangs. But their new gifts come with one important condition — they must keep their crime fighting a secret. Determined to save their friends from a life of crime, the five kids take up the challenge to covertly defeat the neighborhood gang leader, and the Caddy Club is born.
