The female lead from the anime AppleSeed is who Animax creative director Tracy Wong wants to be.

“Deunan is a lean, mean machine. She’s smart and wears amazing Prada shoes. Laughing, she adds softly, “who kicks guys’ ass, only when needed of course.”

With sharp features, long flowing curls tucked neatly behind her eyes and a warm smile, Tracy almost looks as if she’s like dainty Princess Arwen right out of the pages of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Though never in front of the camera before, Tracy takes up a lot of behind-the-camera responsibilities at Animax, almost akin to Peter Jackson’s directing and producing role in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

Carving out her own pat€h

In an interview with UrbanWire, Tracy shares her visualisation process for each anime. “I dream for the look and feel of the whole series because I want to create a cool product at the end of the day. In the end, it does come down to how I visualise it to be.”

She adds that she has to take details into consideration, even in the initial stages of the project. Together with her production team, they will decide “if it shall be a unique flash animation with a layered 3D look” so that she can give specific instructions to the crew and the animators.

For all who view animation as a niché career path, you’d be surprised to know that this award-winning visionary started her career with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Literature in hand, and not an certificate in animation or visual arts even.

“I started out in the civil service at the National Arts Council. Later, I realised that my passion was always to create content for the screen and I wanted to work either in front or behind the camera,” she explained.

Tracy then took a challenging copywriting test at Mediacorp, passed brilliantly and it set her off on her newly-carved career path of creating content for television. Looking back, she describes what the copywriting test was like. Grinning, she shared, “I was given the task of promoting a television series. Given just a few lines on the paper, I scribbled my answer and even drew what envisioned the promotional advertisement would look like.”

Good News!

Truly a creative-thinker, Tracy has produced several on-air promos for Animax and AXN as well as Animax’s theme song “Set Me Apart”, an animated video that recently won the BDA Gold award. She is currently handling a very big project that she’s very excited about. Good news, anime-fans! Animax has announced that Tracy will be the Executive Producer of the channel’s most extensive project, LaMB.

Tracy’s face lights up each time she mentions news on her precious ‘baby’, entitled LaMB. “I’m really honoured to be producing the first original by Animax. It’s great to produce our own movie.” Prior to this project, Animax has been importing anime instead of creating new content. “This is something authentic. It’s made by Asia for Asia. And I’m really excited!”

UrbanWire’s equally thrilled at the potential Project LaMB holds. Themes of romance and sci-fi set in a green planet many light-years away is bound to excite even any non-anime fan.

The female lead Eve lives on a planet Cera that has a revolutionary justice system. While the system considers itself to be of a liberative nature, it is contradictory to its beliefs because of its constrictive power enforced over the wrongdoers of society who are made to wear restrictive suits which takes away their freedom of speech. This system is called Lamination.

Melding her visions with the ideas from the production team, she’s hoping that this project will be a blast. “This time we’ll be trying out a multi-pronged approach to LaMB so it’ll kick off with webmanga (anime comic strips on the Internet) extensions like Cloverfield.”

At this point Tracy’s brimming with excitement; UrbanWire can’t help but wonder where she gets all her inspiration from. “I’ve been doing a lot of research on futuristic movies and anime like Battlestar Galactica and Blade Runner.”

Set to premiere in Feb 2009 on Animax, the first wave of LaMB will hit the screens complete with behind-the-scenes footage similar to how Mediacorp’s Channel 5 features pre-production clips of the blockbuster to be aired.

Effects of Anime

Tracy speaks on anime’s reach on youths. “I just came back from a trip to Jakarta to attend a 3 day event planned by university students called Japanese Evolution. It celebrated Japanese culture with booths and food. The students were even singing in Japanese!”

While the debate on the effects of anime is slowly taking precedence, the Japanese wave continues to surge on as it washes over country after country to even as far as Russia.

Tracy recalls when she first fell in love with anime. “Anime has definitely increased Japan’s popularity. Many fans start learning Japanese or strive to go to Japan someday after loyally following their favourite series.”

While some spend years saving up for the “trip of the century” to Japan, Tracy has been very fortunate to have visited Japan three times in a row!

“My favourite destination? Japan, definitely. The food there is heaven. If you thought clothes in Far East are trendy, go and take a look at Tokyo’s quirky clothes. You can also experience cosplay (dressing up like anime characters) on Sundays.”

Tracy adds that celebrating cosplay is for the fans a way to emulate their favourite character through their own imaginative and creative designs.

“If I could design my own anime character, I’d make her have the school girl look with melancholic big eyes.” She closes her eyes and UrbanWire daren’t make even the slightest noise or disruption as she pictures the character in mind. After a moment’s silence, she opens her eyes and smiles, “But not over the top, of course.”

10 things about Tracy

  1. She has a bike licence, though she doesn’t own a bike! “I find the biker-chick image nice, don’t you think?”
  2. Her favourite destination is Japan.
  3. Her favourite anime is Nodame Cantabile.
  4. After university, with an English and Literature degree, Tracy was an arts administrator before switching lanes to MediaCorp. “I always wanted to be a television producer.”
  5. Her favourite band is The Ting Tings “I turn up the music till it’s very loud in my car – a mini Cooper”
  6. Her favourite shopping mall in Singapore is Far East Plaza. “That’s where all the young people go right?”
  7. On weekends, she goes for coffee at PS. Cafe.
  8. Being a cat-lover, she has a female cat called Bagel. “My friend called me one day and told me that the cat needed a home so I took her in.”
  9. She likes to make top 10 lists every year. “Top 10 movies, top 10 anime… I make the lists and share it with my friends.”
  10. Her favourite movie of 2008 (so far) is Ironman