Animations in Africa still is in it's teething stage trying to crawl because the knowledge is not yet spread even if artists know of the animation principles. One thing is to know about these principles and another is to understand how they are applied. Now Animation is Art and you don't rush Art if you want the best out of it. And that's why you see the Big Studios churning out very beautiful work because Artists working on a project are been divided into groups and assigned different duties with a sense of specialization. And the result is what you see when it's all said and done in a packaged DVD or in the Cinemas as these animated features go beyond boundaries breaking box offices and raking in millions of cash in dollars.
The thing to understand here is not just the fact that it's an Animated feature so it will sell, or that because it was heavily invested in, or created with the computer. This is 2015 and people have seen a lot of animations looking at local TV and Cable channels. They know Tom and Jerry, they've seen Kung fu Panda, Ice age, Toy story etc. And they'll be expecting just about the same or very close quality in Animations when they look at yours. Even if you kill the quality because you are trying to manage quality against production time, these maneuvers will be seen and understood. People will know why you did what and this is quite different from not knowing how to Animate at all. Afterall, you are altimately creating these animations for an audience. Again, take for instance, the Animation series called NARUTO. It's a Japanese cartoon series with a wonderful story line and good enough animations to go with it. They probably would have done better but because it's a series, they have to play down on the quality of animation if the movie has to hit the screens on time.
There is no magic or shortcut to it and until we start seeing things from this perspective, the Animation business will continue to crawl in Nigeria and Africa because nobody wants to buy a product that doesn't have value and that goes to most of our animations. Look at our Music Industry, Nigerian songs are been played in Clubs, in and out of Nigeria. This wasn't happening some ten or twenty years ago but it's possible now because our music artists have bridged that gap. They understand and know what people want and they give it to them. From the lyrics, to production and message, the audience just gulps it in when these songs hits the streets. This is no different from the Animation Industry. Now whether Pixar, Dreamworks, Imagi, Bluesky, Disney etc animates better than us wont really matter. What would matter is that we know how to animate at all. In the real life, asides skill, alot of other things will come into play like man-power, supervision, staff strength, capital, global network etc and that is why they are refered to as BIG Studios.
Conclusion
There is Big Potential for Animations in Africa and the surface of it has not even been scratched. At the moment we are an entertainment consuming continent relying on the outside world for short Animated Movies, Animated Adverts and almost about anything that spans between 3D games and apps. The African Companies that engage the services of these international studios are not convinced that we at home have come of age in delivering to them what they want done, The tide could turn around if African Animation Studios would undertake proper Animation lessons to understand and apply the fundamentals of Animations and in turn encouraged with resources or some form of investment that will aid in the effectively running of the Animation Studio.
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