I have been travelling to Taiwan quite a lot recently. Besides flying to Taiwan for the Golden Horse Awards and the Taichung International Animation Festival for panelling, I also attended a rather big competition as a panel for the very first time. The competition is called Taiwan International Student Design Competition, which was first organised in 2008. I never really noticed this competition before perhaps because it didn’t seem to be about animation. But this time I joined the event as a representative of the Hong Kong Federation of Design Associations by coincidence and found that it was quite an excellent experience. That’s why I am writing this piece to share with students from Macao and Hong Kong about this great event.

The name of this competition is long and therefore everyone calls it TISDC. Last year we have had the 12th TISDC, which was organised by the Taiwan Ministry of Education and sponsored by the iSee Taiwan Foundation and the Sayling Wen Cultural and Educational Foundation. From my observation, the 12th TISDC was backed by abundant human resources and financial support. I believe this reflects Taiwan’s support for international events alike and helps them become more influential.

In fact, I was already in Taiwan earlier in October last year to help out the final assessment of TISDC’s Digital Animation Category. I would not cover other categories such as Product Design, Visual Design and a category created in partnership with businesses since they are not my areas of expertise. There were 11 judges from around the world on the panel for the Digital Animation Category while there were 545 animations coming from 17 countries competing in the category. I found it interesting that there wasn’t any animation coming from Hong Kong or Macao. Perhaps TISDC could have more promotions to attract students from the two cities. After the initial assessment, 43 animations were selected for the grand final. The final lasted for an entire day and we successfully selected the winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes among some quality animations with satisfying results. After the panel finished the assessment, judges of the panel were selected to give a professional lecture at some of Taiwan’s academies. A young designer from Russia and I were selected to give talks at the Tung Fang Design Institute in South Taiwan. We organised a design and animation lecture that’s easy to comprehend and includes very useful knowledge. My talk’s theme was about Hong Kong’s recent animated feature film Departure. The lecture actually won great responses from the students, which made my trip to Taiwan even more meaningful.

In addition, panels coming from the design and animation industry around the world joined several seminars arranged by the event, in an effort to find new directions for animators of the next generation. TISDC also introduced Taiwan’s culture to the panels, including Taiwan’s food culture. There is no doubt that TISDC has played an essential role in the exchange of ideas.

In early December, I went to Taiwan again to join TISDC as the special guest for the award ceremony. Winning students from each category came together at TISDC, which gave me the opportunity to talk to several young animators. I believe everyone was benefited a lot from the event.

The Sea Within the Room, an animation from Taiwan that failed to win an award at the Taichung International Animation Festival, won the Gold Prize at the TISDC. It is a consensus that the success of this animation lies in theme. Every year TISDC will have a theme. This year, the theme has been empathy, which is in line with the story that The Sea Within the Room shows. The Silver Prize was awarded to Seeing Through Her Eyes from Malaysia with strong visual design. The three Bronze Prizes were taken by Japan’s Indoor Days, Taiwan’s Cipher and Thailand’s The Anthurium, which are all 2D animations that focus on visuals. It appears that students are fond of 2D animations these years.

TISDC starts accepting applications every year between May and June, most of which are submitted by students. As long as you are under 30 years old, you are able to sign up for it and submit your application online. The entire process is free of charge. If you are lucky and get selected, you would at least get invited to Taiwan for exchange. There are also chances of winning cash prize and awards. I am hoping that I will be able to see some works from Hong Kong and Macao joining the TISDC in the coming year.

If you are interested in participating, please visit the official website at www.tisdc.org.