PHNOM PENH: A Cambodian team won an award at the DigiCon6 Asia of this year, an event held online and organized in Japan.

The Cambodian animation titled “The Soup” won the Rising Star category, telling an emotional story involving memories and food.

Cambodia has been nominated at the DigiCon Asia before, but that’s the first time the Kingdom has won the international award.

The Cambodian production titled “The Soup” has competed with other Asian countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Hong Kong.

It has been carefully approved by judges from Japan, Korea and America.

Ear Uy was one of the co-creators of “The Soup”. He has spoken with EAC News sharing the background story of his animation:

 “Our film is called ‘the soup’, it’s a short emotional animation which shows an old man that his memories are getting worst and he is starts to forget his wife. But later on, he tastes a soup than his memories start to come back of what happened before. So, it’s a reminder what he has been through by this soup that he used to eat before with his wife”.

The producer told the animation process was faster than the other ones they have made:

“It took a whole month to make the story, so is actually, if you compare this animation to other animation process, is quite fast. Because in the beginning of this production we already have the characters, the way to set up the character, and the process creating new character is set in place to ensure this kind of production of animation will be faster than the normal process of animation.”

But Ear Uy has shared with EAC News that although the production of the characters was fast, the storytelling and the sound effects were a challenge:

“The hardest thing of this type of animation is because is very emotional and the main thing of this animation is that the characters doesn’t talk. Everything is shown by actions so we had to find a way to convey the message through the actions. So, the storytelling is quite the hardest to find an angle to show the old men is getting his memories lost and how to bring the memory back, by only showing and not talking. The other hardest thing is the sound effect. We have to show emotions through sounds. We are not a sound producer, so was difficult to find the sound effect for this animation that we made. So these are the two hardest parts for us.”

The award was announced on Saturday, at the Marunouchi Hall, in Tokyo and streamed online.

The “Soup Animation” can be found at the Production’s Facebook page, called “Team Yerng”.