For 16 years, Dario Silva has excelled with his company Areavisual in the production of theater projects, live shows, intellectual properties and digital developments. In 2022, thanks to a service agreement with the Canadian company Relish Studios, he created Mamoncillo Studios, which is 100% dedicated to animation.
“With Relish came the possibility of working with several of the contracts they had in their studios in Canada and Costa Rica. Since about two years ago I was their producer of several contents looking for Colombian artists to participate and in the end thanks to the amount of work we opened the new studio called Mamoncillo. With Areavisual we continue with our other things” explains Silva.
Paul Pattison, founder and CEO of Relish, recalls that they met Dario six years ago at Kidscreen in Miami, one of the biggest animation events in the world. “There we saw Ana Pirata, a series that Dario was co-creator of, and we fell in love with the project. We helped develop that show, started working together and became close,” says Pattison, who adds that “Dario was always telling us that there is great talent and level of animation production in Colombia and to consider working in that country.”
Relish began to grow more and more with projects for series, films, video games and interactive attractions, as they needed more and more animators, they remembered their Colombian friend. “We didn’t know much about Colombian animation before and it has been a great surprise to see that there is a lot of talent in animation. They have been a great support for Relish and have great potential to make bigger and bigger projects” adds Sacha Raposo, founder and president of Relish.
A few months after its incorporation, Mamoncillo Studios is made up of 60 people with the capacity to make 2D and 3D animations. They currently provide services exclusively for Relish due to the number of projects they have with that company, although they aspire in the future to be able to provide services to more companies.
“We are helping them develop their intellectual properties and doing some of the projects they have with big international brands. We get the scripts from Canada and from there we take over the production. We do story boarding, modeling, texturing, absolutely all the animation. Then the post-production is done directly in Canada” describes Silva, who for these projects has also partnered with other Colombian companies.
The head of Mamoncillo Studios mentions that one of the most interesting aspects of their work with Relish is that they apply different animation techniques because they do not only focus on series and movies: “We are making a metaverse for a theater in a very important place in the USA”.
Due to the number and size of the projects they are working on, Mamoncillo is constantly looking for artists in Colombia, which is a sign that the animation industry in the country is growing every day: “This is also due in large part to the tax and cash rebate benefits in Colombia, which attracts a lot of attention abroad. It is one of the great strongholds we have. In addition, in Colombia we don’t do maquila, because we privilege the artistic and innovative in our products no matter what they are. That’s how we add value to the work.”