Joan Vogelesang, president and CEO of Montreal-based software developer Toon Boom Animation, has received two awards at Animae Caribe 2011, the Caribbean’s main animation festival.

Festival director Camille Selvon-Abrahams presented Vogelesang with an award for her support of the festival, now in its 10th year. Toon Boom has been a sponsor of the festival for seven years, and has helped in bringing global animation industry leaders to the festival as speakers.

Vogelesang also received an award from Stephen Cadiz, Trinidad and Tobago minister of trade and industry, in recognition of her contribution to the animation industry in Trinidad and Tobago over the last 10 years.

Vogelesang and Selvon-Abrahams first connected seven years ago, when Selvon-Abrahams reached out via email, and Vogelesang, having grown up in Trinidad, said they would help to develop the industry in Trinidad and expand to the rest of the Caribbean.

“Up until then, the festival had primarily creative people that went down,” Vogelesang tells Playback Daily. “I managed to get in at the very senior levels in the [Caribbean] countries to discuss the business of animation.”

“Entertainment is a profit-making business,” she says of the benefit to promoting the animation industry in the Caribbean. “It also creates jobs in sectors in which people do not normally find good employment.”

Vogelesang compares Toon Boom’s efforts in the Caribbean to the company’s earlier efforts in India, an animation economy that went from “virtually nothing” to $2 billion annually in gaming, VFX and talent development.

“[With] the ability to do local content [and take it to] an international level, [countries can] start to look for export markets either within their own diaspora or be able to export to the market at large,” she says.

Vogelesang adds that another long-term goal is to introduce studios in the Caribbean (now established in Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica) to other studios around the world to create collaborative opportunities, and expand animation opportunities in educational institutions in the Caribbean countries.

Photo: Joan Vogelesang with Stephen Cadiz, Trinidad and Tobago minister of trade and industry / Toon Boom