Festival by Pixelatl begins today in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in what promises to be the largest-ever animation industry event that has ever happened in Mexico. Two earlier editions of the festival—Chroma Fest and Laguna Fest—have taken place the past few years, but this year’s event is unprecedented in scale and scope within the Mexican animation community.
One of the major goals of the event, which is sponsored by the government-funded organization Pixelatl, is to foster a culture in which Mexican studios develop, produce, and export original IP.
Even as the animation industry in Mexico has expanded over the past decade, most of the industry money flows from service-oriented work for non-Mexican Western producers and only a handful of original TV series have been created in Mexico over the past decade. The feature industry is also in its nascent stages: budgets are beginning to grow–especially through government grants and tax incentives—but there are few studios that can offer consistent employment, which makes it difficult to build production teams and focus on long-term development.
