Costa Rica’s digital animation, on the rise

By IDeas trademarks & patents

Together with local companies Herald Entertainment, Estudio Shout, LasalaPost, Sueter Studio, Estudio Ático, Tropics Creative and Relish Costa Rica, Costa Rica’s foreign trade agency (PROCOMER) attended at Miami from February 10 to 13, 2020, the Kidscreen Summit, the kids entertainment industry’s most important annual event. “The Costa Rican economy is reaching an increasingly advanced level of sophistication and for this reason we continue to strengthen support for companies of the services sector,” PROCOMER stated in a press release.

Kidscreen Summit welcomed more than 2,000 attendees from 50-plus countries. Top executives attend Kidscreen Summit to take advantage of the year’s best business networking, and to engage in critical dialogue on issues that affect the industry.

In February 2020 Relish Interactive, the Toronto-based digital game publisher behind Weirdwood Manor (pictured), acquired Costa Rica-based Rocket Cartoons, in an effort to grow Relish’s in-house animation team and bolster its own creative capabilities.
The two teams will merge, but Rocket Cartoons will continue to exist as a separate entity, which will co-develop IP with Relish as part of a first-look deal.

Relish is looking to take on a greater role in the production of its digital games, and to up its 3D-animated productions, with the acquisition. The digital game maker acquired Rocket because the indie studio has experience producing 2D- and 3D-animated children’s projects, which include 13 x five-minute preschool series CocoLand about animal friends; the short-form series Kip Van Creepy (six x three minutes), which was commissioned by DreamWorks TV; the short film Terror in Doomsville (22 minutes), which was picked up by Cartoon Network LatAm; and the in-development 90-minute film Triple Travis.