PUSHING for an animation industry in Baguio and the entire country has given the Cordillera School of Digital Arts (CSDA) a colorful journey over a decade of lessons learned by paving the path to where we are today.
With a mission to be the leading digital arts school that is relevant, innovative and team driven.
At the helm of operations, CSDA president, Raul Boncan attributes success of the school to its core values of excellence committing to comply with the highest training and assessment system, uncompromising quality through the utilization of the most efficient and effective operational procedures.
Boncan relays competition and capital as the foremost challenges an animation project entails in the country starting in 2007 when the prospect of the industry was young and the prospect of success was unsure.
Boncan began the school with no ongoing studios in Baguio and offering quality education and a career in the animation industry which was viewed as a foreign prospect, unreachable to local animators.
Starting with 15 CSDA animators who gambled on their first project, the team was born and from there, the start of something big began, testing character and thriving with the promise of better days.
Boncan operated the business hinged on morals and business ethics capitalizing on market trends, new management ideas and steering the team with encouragement and innovation.
In 2008, the school landed a training project with the first all-digital Filipino produced movie called Dayo sa Mundo ng Elementalya in time for the 2008 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).
In 2010, CSDA was adjudged as a finalist in the Animihenasyon Film Festival held at the Ateneo de Naga, properly pitting the Baguio-based talents to the same level with: the College of St. Benilde (La Salle), Ateneo de Naga, Ateneo de Zamboanga and iAcademy, an achievement for an upstart training institution to lock horns with well-established colleges and universities.
In 2012, CSDA focused competency based training and the revamped school training systems and expanded strategies to include other in demand course under Design and Technology Programs which covers Creative Media Arts, Animation and Design and Game Development to train students in the current best practices and be taught by actual industry practitioners and not mere theorists.
In 2013, CSDA partnered with High Schools and Universities to train for K+12 requirements in the Visual Arts programs, and is also a supporter and player to the One Asean Initiative by becoming a pilot institution that will provide actual internships to member countries under the Asean Economic Community programs.
Today CSDA is an established animation school with a partner animation studio, Xentrix Toons, Inc. with a steady flow of animators working on foreign TV series projects.
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