Graphics arts academy up in Cebu soon

Updated April 04, 2009 12:00 AM

CEBU, Philippines - A Cebu-based Hollywood outsourcing firm, VersaGrafx Designs Philippines Inc., is going to set up the first Graphic Arts Academy in Cebu to hone local talents, and strengthen the creative industry here.

VersaGrafx Designs Philippines, which has been doing conceptualization and designing jobs for film promotional materials of Hollywood movie production companies, will be setting up a 100-seat Graphic Arts Academy within this year, or early 2010, as Cebu has been hit by an exodus of graphic artists, landing high-paying jobs in Canada, Dubai, Singapore and the United States.

In an interview VersaGrafix creative director Junny D. Mahilum, he said that there is a need for Cebu to provide a good pool of talented and world-class graphic artists as this kind of talent is now becoming one of the most in-demand jobs in the world, yet is probably “overlooked” by some educational institutions.

The company which was established in Cebu in 2005 at the Asia Town IT Park has been doing post-production conceptualization designs for over 200 Hollywood movies, working closely with large movie studios like Lions Gate, Paramount Pictures, Weinstein Studios, MGM, Universal Studios, Warner Bros, Columbia Tristar, among others.

Mahilum said Cebu has already made it as one of the preferred sites for voice or call center outsourcing firms. In programming, Cebu still has to work harder in order to compete with India.

But in graphic arts (creative) sector, this niche has not been well explored yet, although Cebu has a very big potential in capturing this multi-million dollar BPO segment.

Mahilum related that in one of the trainings conducted by the company’s headquarters in North Hollywood called VersaGrafix Design Group, and the VersaStack Merchandising, American design experts were in fact impressed by the Cebuano creative talents especially in graphic design.

In the company’s earlier operations in Cebu, the first few graphic artists employed by VersaGrafix here are now working abroad. Now, the company is maintaining a pool of six graphic artists led by Mahilum to do orders mostly from movie studios in Hollywood.

In fact, the six-man team is now working on several movie post production collaterals, including Brad Pitt’s newest and upcoming movie called “In Glorious Bastards” by Paramount Pictures and Weinstein Studios; Transformer 2; The Punisher, among others.

These Cebuano graphic artists had done the conceptualization designs for Hollywood box-office hits such as Rambo, Spiderman, Jessica Alba’s-The Eye, Legally Blond-2, Iron Man, Saw IV and 200 more hit movies.

The company’s designing process involves a review of cinematographic materials and on-location shoots and still photographs to be used in the conceptualization and design.—Ehda M. Dago-oc