Animation-The January Outlook

The year 2013 has kicked of on a very high note for the Kenyan animation industry.Recon digital released a series of short animations that were done by their team of apprentice animators and from what we can see,we should expect nothing but the best from them in 2013...probably even a TV animated series(domestic disturbance).You can read about their story from Techmoran    

 
In addition...we've been following up on international news and it seems that part of the visual effects company, Digital Domain  has been sold off to the Chinese..... "The latest deal Zhong completed was a joint venture between the US division of the company and Reliance Media Works Ltd of India for the special effects unit and various other businesses and assets of the US visual effects and animation company Digital Domain. Galloping Horse owns 70 percent of the new venture"

The good news for most of us is that we will actually get to see the Legend of Tembo produced and released ‘on schedule’-which is probably in 2014.There is very scarce information regarding the above animation but from the name,I believe it will have a lot of references to Africa or even more specifically,Kenya.We’ll just have to wait and see.
Check out these links for the additional information:

http://www.chinesefilms.cn/141/2013/01/22/122s13453.htm

http://www.chinesefilms.cn/141/2012/11/30/122s13064.htm

http://www.tcpalm.com/photos/galleries/2011/aug/12/legend-tembo-exclusive-first-look/74552/#section_header

Another development that will excite any CG Artist in Kenya, is the prospect of having a 'render farm' with quite a lot of rendering power (not everyone can get a G5 Mac/Mac Pro you know..) right here in Nairobi.This may soon be possible if the project being undertaken at the iHub-Ngong Road, in Nairobi,Kenya achieves it's goal.The iHub-through some of it's members and other partners, is creating/hosting a cluster based computing system that will be equipped with enough power to render most of the processor intensive simulations and photorealistic3D images any CG artist in Kenya aims to create.The iHub Cluster project-conceptualized by a Kenyan ICT guru..Idd Saalim seeks to bring 'supercomputing' to Kenyans and will be used to teach/test parallel programming software developed in Kenya among many other things...e.g 3D rendering so be sure to check their page on the iHub website for any updates.