When most people think of Singapore’s creative industries, they picture the gleaming skyline of Marina Bay, the culinary chaos of a hawker center, or perhaps the cinematic spectacle of Crazy Rich Asians . Few immediately think of pencil tests, peg bars, and light tables.

At 10 am, the team is gathered around a TV screen, reviewing an animatic for a preschool show bound for CBeebies. The director, a Singaporean in her 30s, points to a sequence involving a otter (Singapore’s unofficial animal mascot).

“We were the best invisible artists in the world,” says , a veteran animator who worked on The Amazing Spiez! . “We could match any style—French, American, Japanese. But we had no style of our own.”