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Filmmaker Lolita Chiong: ‘We Need To See Cartoons As Film And Entertainment’

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Filmmaker Lolita Chiong: ‘We Need To See Cartoons As Film And Entertainment’

The Singapore creative, known for her trademark nostalgic-meets-Y2K aesthetic, shares how the local animation scene can get a leg up.

by Keng Yang Shuen  /   October 25, 2020

An animation clip from local cartoon series, Small Small News, that was designed by Lolita Cheong. Credit: Courtesy

Who: Lolita Chiong, filmmaker and animator

Her aesthetic: “Nostalgia, 2000s, television, fuzzy, warm, chicken soup” may not make much sense on its own, but everything clicks when you hit Chiong’s Instagram account @lolita_chiong.

Spazzy fonts, adorable animal caricatures and the general lo-fi nature of ’90s cartoons ooze from her works, recalling the era’s animated classics such as The Rugrats. Others remind you of children’s educational shows from the time except that Chiong’s subverted them with a sly sense of humour, including a short toon in which a customer shops up a storm at the supermarket to make a jelly filled with bits of meat.

View this post on Instagram

A Halloween rollerblading party 👻⛸ I only celebrated Halloween once as a common ghost with a $2 pumpkin basket at Woodlands and it was so fun🥺

A post shared by 🦜 (@lolita_chiong) on Jan 30, 2020 at 4:43pm PST

Outside of animation, Chiong’s beautiful watercolour illustrations bring to mind that of greats such as Quentin Blake. And while the TV shows of her childhood may have influenced her art, the 20-year-old is already playing a part in the childhoods of the next generation: her first animation job sees Chiong as the art director of a new local cartoon series, Small Small News, where ants serve as news anchors.

READ MORE: Race Krehel Is The Digital Artist Dreaming Up Futuristic Urbanscapes

What got her started: “I’ve always watched all kinds of TV programmes – horse racing, cooking shows, documentaries, cartoons, news, basically everything – and had been drawing what I saw on screen since I was a kid until I landed in art school.”

On Singapore’s animation scene: “If more people invest in animation here, the scene will grow for sure… Right now we’ve very little IP and most animation is done for service work like corporate videos, government projects and other countries’ IP. It’s not special… A lot of people in the industry dream of leaving because there are such good cartoons and films being produced overseas. To change this, we need to see cartoons as film and entertainment.”


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https://www.femalemag.com.sg/gallery/culture/sg-filmmaker-lolita-chiong-cartoon/
Filmmaker Lolita Chiong: 'We Need To See Cartoons As Film And Entertainment'
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A version of this article first appeared in the Oct 2020 The Animation Edition of FEMALE

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  • TAGS:
  • animation
  • animator
  • art
  • artists
  • design
  • digital art
  • illustrator
  • lolita cheong
  • singapore artists
  • singapore designers
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