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Former refugee an industry pioneer for Khmer-language 3D animation
Raksmey Hong | Publication date 11 May 2021 | 16:45 ICT

When he was living in a refugee camp in Thailand, Phat Sophal had no idea that what he was studying there would end up forming the basis for his career and become one of his passions.

Nor did he realise what a rare skill in his homeland it was to be able to create 3D animation like he was learning how to do.

Sophal and his family members were among the tens of thousands of people who fled to Thailand from Cambodia and who ended up at the Sa Kaeo I and II Refugee Camps – first when the Khmer Rouge came to power and then when the genocidal regime was overthrown.

In 1991, Sophal was nine years old and lucky enough to be studying computer animation with a foreign teacher in his refugee camp despite the difficult surroundings he had to overcome.

“I could study drawing with a French teacher who told the students in the camp that drawing was fun and everyone could learn to do it. He said ‘please take this skill and use it to help your nation’,” he says.

Those words resonated with Sophal and it became his dream to help his nation by working in the field of animation and providing educational content.

“After that he showed some French cartoons to us and then my dream began to grow and it was like a lamp shining brightly to give me a guiding light through the darkest places in my life, because at that time there were no schools and when we came back home we were living in very poor conditions,” says Sophal, now 40.

With his sister, Mao Khuoch, they travelled to seek jobs as workers in the neighbouring country to save money to buy a computer and pursued their studies in animation.

“It wasn’t until 2003 that I could afford to buy a computer for myself. It cost $120 and we bought it with our savings from working as construction workers in Thailand.

“But there were no schools, no one had what I needed. I travelled from one computer shop to another looking for animation software. Then in 2007 I finally found a copy of Autodesk 3DS MA X – and I have been using that to draw cartoons ever since,” says Sophal.

One of Sophal’s cartoons stars a rabbit, an animal that plays the part of the scholar in traditional Khmer folktales and symbolises wisdom. The rabbit introduces younger viewers to all 33 consonants in the Khmer language and script in batches.

The rabbit-scholar announces to the children watching what consonant is about to arrive before the letters fall onto the screen and then a bird uses them to write ‘Kor’.

There are millions of educational videos on every topic imaginable no matter what age the child is or what their ability level happens to be – but they are all available in English. Comparable educational resources for kids are almost non-existent for the Khmer language and Sophal is working to change that.

Veha Entertainment is a Khmer animated production studio founded by Sophal just recently in the Covid-19 pandemic era.

They have started out with their first two five-consonant parts episodes starring their scholarly rabbit and are doing another line of videos with Princess Jenna Norodom.


The Veha Entertainment Production team is doing another line of videos with Princess Jenna Norodom. SUPPLIED
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