Animation West Africa Foundation is something I have been working on for a while, jin and around 2007 I was working as a 3d artist/animator in Capetown South Africa, my director then Stuart Forrest the owner of Triggerfish Animation Studios had set up ASA (Animation South Africa) which I was and still a member, he saw the desire in me to create something similar for the industry I actually belonged to - the very silent West Africa CG industry - our working relationship was more of a friend to friend basis even though it was also an employer to staff one. (I started as an intern)

I must mention that Stuart was quite supportive and helped me finally decide a direction for my passion and desire to see the local CG industry of West Africa grow out of the mediocre (in terms of knowledge base plus standardized skills) and non-profitable one that it is towards the direction of one which attracts the global interest, stakeholders and a destination for not cheap but affordable and reliable manpower with Africa as a whole.

As I lived my day to to life, I would receive so many emails from people I do not know and never met before asking me for directions, suggestions, advice and questions about the 3d animation, CG and about the local industry in South Africa, this got me thinking about what I consider a wealth of CG practitioners with countries like Nigeria, Ghana etc yet it is clear that those who understand the name of the game know that for the type of quality training, exposure, development and in some cases CG services they require it is better to look outside of this region and move towards the Southern African region  and that is if they will chose to stay within Africa in order to get good quality product and animated services... why should that be so? I wondered.

The few Nigerians I met or met me in Capetown have shown extra ordinary skills and ability to improve their skills within a short time, they have taken their careers more serious compared to their South African counterparts (my opinion here though, nothing prejudicial intended), this shows to me that with the right resources, investment and improvements of the local industry in West Africa, the story can change within a short time with concentrated efforts, for instance Nollywood the third largest movie industry behind Hollywood and Bollywood would then be able to boast of not just quantity in film production but quality aswell... thinking about it really, there are so many other industries and jobs to be created if the CG industry will improve its standards and presence within West Africa and for this reason and other future prospects, I have decided to set up AWA - Animation West Africa Foundation, the 'foundation' in the name suggests that it would pursue community development as a charitable incorporated entity.

Pls stay on this page for constant updating and declaration of purpose behind AWA Foundation.

Cheers


Hello there,

Welcome here once again and thanks for staying on the journey with Animation West Africa Foundation,  the intentions and ideas are indeed potentially good but as usual any idea need the factors of People, Resources and Timeliness in order to make them come fully achieved.

At the moment AWA has successfully set itself up alongside players in the global CG industry who are willing to support us through the process in part of in whole.
Recently we had our very first AWA Hard Surface modelling challenge and we were very excited when Digital Tutors agreed to sponsor our first and subsequent editions of the challenge. 
Although we did not have as much participation as expected (being the first I suppose), the worthy participants were treated to a full free subscription by Digital Tutors http://www.digitaltutors.com/, PixelCoprs has been a great support too offering every African member coming via AWA a free standard membership to their forum where you can benefit from live streaming sessions, interactivity and be able to meet particular people in the wider CG industry http://www.pixelcorps.com/

This first CG challenge was in 2011, we are now in 2012 and already thinking of a second CG is  themed 'Tell A Tale'' a 2d and 3d interpretation of the same still shot challenge, however this time we are taking it a notch further with judges panel up to 5 in number, veterans from various award winning studios from the US, Canada etc. We are hopeful to be able to get more sponsors for the rewards aswell and this is a work in progress.

At the moment, a fully functioning website/web portal is being handled by the web team set up for this purpose, however I will say more on this in another update. 

These are just a bit of what AWA is up at the moment but still a wide gap from the ultimate destination, and for us to get to the destination the 3 factors mentioned earlier on will matter a lot.  The People factor will determine who runs with the idea, how it is run with and how much the ideas and vision is accomplished, while the Resources factor can mean that the people factor are willing and able to utilise any given resource, offer and provide resource in order to achieve the direction of the idea, all of these must be done with some level of Timeliness, not just the right product from the right source through the right channel to the right user but all of these must be done at the right time.

There can be a wealth of resources and people plus information but these can lead to a quagmire of potentially useful feedbacks however if they are not timely, they can be as useless as when they do not exist at all.

Why not decide to contribute your support in any way possible to help build a great future for the West Africa CG industry where people will be able to sustain themselves from what they love to do and many more younger one will be able to see a future in Computer Graphics and setting themselves up to succeed in it as a career path.

Please check out the donation and support page.

Cheers.

Hello there,
Happy Month of June to you all... new AWA Foundation banner here above

Animation West Africa Foundation recently had their very first on-line event via live stream TV, it was a eventful one having the ''AWA Logo and Mascot Launch'' in that being the very first time using such on-line tool and live on-line events, it was a bit of a learning curve both for the host and the crowd... and after a minor shaky start to get used to the technology of streaming your video and desktop live, I'd say things went on nicely.

Without a script or so, however the delivery was still able to captivate the audience, who remained loyal till the end. Talking about the audience though, we recorded lower than par considering the number who said they will be attending and the number that actually attended, nevertheless the programme went on.
For some it was a case of unforeseen circumstances and they were still on the road at the time of event, others could not just fit the timing into their own time zone, and some others equally had the same challenge using to on-line tool and probably gave up trying, the internet and bandwidth capacity was also an issue for some.

The event marked a stride in the in AWA's existence, we launched our logo which has been in the works for a while, its a 3d logo not animated though but presented to assume a 2d image... thanks to the concerted efforts of a couple of members but on top of the initiative is Richard Oboh a foremost animator and vfx guy in Nigeria, his clients include state governments and international facing TV clients programmes.


We had the opportunity to see a sneak peek on the the website we are working on, this is still in the works and has been for a while, however we can only keep at it and wait for the successful outcome using members help and free time to develop the website intended to serve as a webportal, allow for click throughs and banner advertisement for the larger audience.

There was the Mascot revelation aswell, the mascot is an Ostrich bird... not sure if we should call it a bird or not but yes an Ostrich... the largest bird but which cant fly due to size, also the fastest bird on land, laying the biggest eggs but truth is that its got the smallest egg size when compared to the proportion of her own body... The Ostrich became our mascot choice because of the attributes named above and because I just thought it would be fun to animate and relate with, especially when customised to the African warrior likeness.
We could not launch the mascot as it was still in WIP however we were able to see the progress and understand the challenges keeping this back so far... people and their time (maybe commitment too though). Hopefully soon we will be able to present the community mascot in its full glory.

The online event was basically broken into 2 parts, not intentionally though but it worked, the first streaming was myself the founder of AWA giving a brief talk about the purpose of AWA in general, why it became necessary for this to happen and the second was the launch even itself.


We are here making all efforts to generate the interest of the bigger global industry towards out direction even if it means us devising our own modalities and how we run the industry, pretty much like China and India have done for themselves, we have the manpower, the skills are not lacking (yes maybe the ratio of standardized skill to the non standardized ones has more to be desired), however, its a progressing move and with the presence of Animation West Africa Foundation we can begin to understand how to tackle these challenges and use them as a cushion effect and a catalyst to our own development, no one else can do these for us except us but we welcome partnering and investment where possible... 

AWA We cant go wrong!

Sen-Debowski
for AWA
http://gplus.to/deboh 

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