AI REWRITES THE SCRIPT FOR INDONESIAN CHILDREN’S PROPERTY IN INDIA–INDONESIA PARTNERSHIP

Dubai-headquartered Prodigi Connect has partnered with Indonesia’s Lokanima to develop animated content based on the established Fun Cican children’s entertainment property. Signed during an India–Indonesia creative economy event in Jakarta, the collaboration aims to use AI-native production methods to reduce costs, accelerate development and support local creative participation.

A new India–Indonesia creative partnership is seeking to demonstrate how artificial intelligence can help revive animation projects that were once considered commercially unviable.

Prodigi Connect, a Dubai-headquartered AI video production company with production operations in India, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lokanima, the creative venture of Indonesia’s Singhasari Special Economic Zone, to develop animated content based on Fun Cican, a well-established Indonesian children’s entertainment property known for its music and character-driven appeal.

The collaboration brings together Prodigi Connect’s AI-native production capabilities and Lokanima’s local creative expertise in an effort to transform the long-running intellectual property into animated content that can be produced more efficiently while retaining strong creative oversight.

For Fun Cican, the agreement represents a renewed opportunity. A previous attempt to develop the property into an animated format was abandoned after conventional animation production proved too expensive and time-consuming to sustain. According to the companies, advances in AI-enabled production workflows have significantly altered that equation.

As an early demonstration of the project’s potential, Prodigi Connect has already completed an animation sequence of approximately one minute, providing an initial glimpse of how the characters could be brought to the screen using the new production approach.

“Somebody tried to animate this character once and had to stop, because it cost too much and took too long. That maths has changed,” said Lijo Ittoop, Founder of Prodigi Connect.

Under the terms of the MoU, Prodigi Connect will contribute its AI-native production pipeline, workflow methodology and quality standards, while Lokanima will provide the intellectual property relationship, local creative direction and access to Indonesian production talent.

The partners emphasised that technology is intended to complement rather than replace creative expertise. The production model has been designed around collaboration with Indonesian creative teams, combining local cultural understanding with technology-driven production processes.

For Prodigi Connect, whose core business remains brand and campaign production, the project also serves as a testing ground for the capabilities of AI-powered animation. Character-based storytelling presents some of the most demanding challenges in AI production, requiring consistent character appearance, believable performance, visual continuity and synchronised dialogue across scenes and languages.

“AI has not replaced the creative decisions. It has removed the reason those decisions were unaffordable,” Ittoop said.

Beyond the development of a single entertainment property, the partnership reflects broader changes taking place across the creative industries. By reducing production barriers, AI-native workflows may create new opportunities for local intellectual properties to reach audiences while enabling production teams in countries such as India to participate in international projects through expertise that extends beyond traditional outsourcing models.

The MoU was signed during a bilateral India–Indonesia creative economy launch in Jakarta. The event was officially opened by Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto, and included remarks from Minister of Creative Economy Teuku Riefky Harsya. India was represented by Bijay Selvaraj, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy.

With the first Fun Cican animation sequence already completed, Prodigi Connect and Lokanima are taking a first step towards proving that AI-native production, combined with local creative participation and cultural authenticity, can offer a new path for established entertainment properties seeking a screen future.