Cloudy outlook

Cloud this….cloud that…..SaaS, IaaS, PaaS……most of you have by now come across the above words in one article, blog, magazine or whatever source of information somewhere. Today I want to give you a brief primer on what the cloud is and what it means for you as a 3d artist. First off I will start with a very basic example……Most of us usually cook our own food at home whenever we want to eat….you just take your sufuria, boil some hot water mix the hot water with some flour and stir till it’s solid enough to be Ugali, fry some eggs on the side and voila!!Dinner is served. On the other hand there are some cases whereby for one reason or another you choose to order food from a hotel/café/restaurant….watu wa terrific Tuesday’s wapi nduru!!!The café will buy the ingredients and do all the cooking and even deliver the food right to your house.

This two examples above illustrate the basic concept that underlies cloud computing. In the first case one does everything on their own in this case 3D modelling, rendering e.t.c on their own computer while in the cloud based scenario all this is done on the cloud using the other parties resources.

If you have ever used Gmail, Yahoo mail, the omnipresent Google apps then you have been experiencing cloud services but you just never knew it. As far as graphic design and content creation is concerned, I am yet to use any of the cloud 3D products on the cloud hence cannot really provide the best advice on whether one should consider them to the traditional setup but I can provide you a glimpse of what it may feel like. I came across the site below clara.io that I believe you can test out to see if indeed you may one day get to fully migrate to working in the cloud.I liked how the site required very minimal input before you could test the service.

The rough guide below illustrates how to go about it.
1.Visit the site clara.io and register yourself.I  used a fictitious account(username: testing,email:testing@loresho.com plus a random password) for this as you can see below:NB:Please ensure your password is not less than 6 characters

Click on 'Start Editing' and let it load

2.You will land on a page similar to the one below.When you click on the 'User account section' on the top right you can see we are already logged in so no confirmation emails or stuff like that are required before we can access the system.The packages on offer are also listed below and the pricing seems rather fair too.Anyway,moving on...

3.Click on the 'Scenes' tab and you will be directed to the following window.After a lengthy deliberation 0.01 seconds that is,I decided I would use an existing scene in their library rather than start from scratch.

4.I picked a car from the list.The "Marussia B2" to be exact.(I don't know why it never showed up in the screenshot below).After picking your car just click your way to the main scene as the following steps show.

5.You should eventually end up in a scene similar to the one below from where you can now explore on your own.

I'm not sure whether it was my computer,browser or the internet but my experience was not very smooth. I have 4gb memory and a very basic graphics card on the laptop I was using a 1Mbps connection (124KBps if you like).I got the javascript message below

after a few minutes of meddling around, my patience ran out and I moved on to other "important matters"…..wow that masked dragon rider following Hiccup and toothless under clouds looks so cool…..ahem!!So that’s how my first cloud experience went. PLEASE NOTE THIS WAS DONE ON SHORT NOTICE WITH A "BAD FOR 3D LAPTOP" SO IT DOES NOT REPRESENT THE CLOUD EXPERIENCE. Try it out and let me know what you think.If you have used any of the available subscription services/cloud, whether from Adobe,Autodesk or other 3D related companies let me know how it went.Godspeed animators!

PS:Sorry guys, I haven’t been able to post for quite a while,I have other non 3D projects that have been eating up my time.

2013 FILM CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION HELD AT THE KICC

The Kenya Film Commission finally held the animation expo on the 21^st and the 22^nd of June 2013 at the KICC.

The event had been scheduled to take place earlier but it was not so due to some hiccups.

I was unable to attend on the first day,being a work day hence I had other commitments. However on the 22^nd at around 11pm I was there.I was in the company of my uncle who was quite interested in finding out more about what this 'animation thing' is all about

First of all,KICC is a large conference complex and being a weekend another event The 11^th Exhibition by Kenyan Universities organized by the Commission for University education was taking place in the Courtyard.I believe it would have been better if the KFC had chosen to stage the event outdoors I.e KICC's Comesa grounds or even the courtyard as this would have also captured the large crowd that attended the CUE event.

Having attended the last two animation festivals at Sarit Centre and Prestige Plaza,I found the venue-Tsavo hall which is in the basement a bit 'depressing' to speak.Visitors were encouraged to register before proceeding to the conference and we did so.Some of the companies that showed up for the conference include Rift 3D,FatBoy Animations,Airpress Communications,Tsunami Studios,Anto Dezigns,NewBreed Academy of Digital Arts,Nairobi Institute of Technology,Multimedia University among others.

Newbreed Academy which was started by Andrew Kaggia was busy marketing their courses which are competitively priced compared to other colleges.

Fatboy Animations(the team behind the Faiba animation)and who have been making news of late with their popular Safaricom adverts were also present.Working with Safaricom has been keeping them busy of late.

The Tsunami stand was one of the most active stands at the Conference.Tsunami studio is a 'new' company made up of 3 different studios-Shout Huge,Andromeda Music and Kenyan Noir.The Tsunami crew were very lively and having their booth near the entrance did not hurt.A member of the Tsunami crew Ben Gicheru informed us that they were in the process of making a bi-weekly comic Kevo,which they would be turning into an animated motion comic too.

Elite digital solutions were also present.The company is one of the main sources of original Apple products and they had several on display.In addition they are authorized adobe resellers and the team at the conference was busy trying to convince me and other conference attendees to move with the times and adopt Adobe's cloud solution 'Adobe Creative Cloud for teams'.Now I'm yet to test it out but considering the erratic,expensive and slow Internet speeds that we have,i believe it will be quite a while before any local company adopts a full cloud based solution.

Rift 3D were seeking exposure of their upcoming project,a short scifi animation.Check out the trailer.

Local institutions offering animation courses were also present-NIT and Multimedia University.Isaac Wasilwa a student from Multimedia University(and part of the team that animated the Njoroge music video) was the one who gave us insight into how the courses at Multimedia University are.

Airpress communications representative Martin 'Marto' gave us brief glimpse of what they do best.The company has done several TV idents for local stations and are preparing one for a local TV station seeking to rebrand.

These are the highlights of  the 2013 National Film Conference and Exhibition 2013 'Animation expo 2013'.As for now,polish those poses,animate those faces and see you in the next conference.

THE AITEC BROADCAST FILM AND MUSIC EVENT HELD AT THE KICC ON THE 26th-27th of JUNE 2013

It seems animation practitioners are getting more and more recognition these days with two events being held in the last few weeks each having sections for the animation industry with the Aitcec broadcast and film event being the most recent.KICC was the place to be

Various animation studios were present to showcase their animation work on the floor

Chomoka studios

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Tsunami studios

Anto dezigns-Have finished their first 3D animated short titled Makmende 2 begins.

The film is available from at Ksh 150 which is fair considering the effort it took to produce.

Aitec organised a 'roundtable discussion' too as part of the 'AITEC broadcast and film event' conference.The round-table was moderated by Ms Mundu Mwara,a regular face in the local animation industry.The panelists were

Gatumia Gatumia-Recon Digital

Andrew Kaggia-Digitall Definitions

Harto Macharia-Tsunami studios

Ngendo Mukii-(Go team ladies!!)

The round-table conference was not really well attended though with around 70 people in total showing up for the talk that lasted for one and a half hours.

The talk kicked of on a high note with attendees being treated to a visual feast of the panelists show-reels.

Ngendo Mukii whose recent short animation Yellow Fever is doing well was quite clear on why she had made the animation.

 According to Ngendo she was wondering 'Why do we as African Women do so many things to ourselves to look European e.g no female TV presenter has natural hair.This sends a message to the viewers on standards of beauty which are judged according to non African standards'

The quest for socially conscious animation was exemplified by Andrew Kaggias animation 'Wageuzi' which has featured in Kalasha,ZIFF and even on CNN giving Andrew great exposure. Andrew says that after releasing the animation and it went 'viral' three Kenyan politicians approached him at different times seeking to persuade him to create a similar animation although in this case each of them emerging as the 'winner'.

In addition there was concern expressed that the quality of animation graduates being created by our colleges are not really employable as they have sub-standard skills.This is one of the reasons that Recon Digital chose to train its own apprentices before employing them.

One of the participants encouraged people who would like to be animators/are pursuing animation to get their stuff out there e.g through Vimeo,Youtube and even Behance.The aim of this is to get the exposure and criticism that is necessary to help an animator/CG artist to take their art to the next level.

Gatumia who is the founder of Recon Digital also encouraged those seeking to start animation studios to get legal and professional in their operations as soon as possible e.g pay your taxes,get the necessary licenses e.t.c to prevent future hurdles that may return to haunt you.Gatumia was also categorical that the Association of Animation Artistes Kenya still has a long way to go before it becomes the force it should be.There is need for more people to take up animation-and not just as a hobby but as an income generating profession.Once the numbers are there,the association will be better placed economic wise to help develop the industry to global standards.All in all it was a great event and lets hope the best is yet to come.