Leadership (Abuja)
Yakeen Nurudeen
30 January 2008
Jos — By the end of 2010, hundreds of Africans, especially Nigerian youths would have been successfully trained in visual effects and animation, according to Oladeji Victor Bamidele, the Nigerian born South African based multi-media guru. At the moment, Oladeji, who is the director of Image Studio, Cape Town, South Africa has stormed the city of Jos, Plateau State where students and multi-media practitioners have been attending a workshop on 3D communication which started on January 31 and expected to end on February 3.
Oladeji's Image Animation Studio in conjunction with the Jos based Media village Nigeria will during the course of the workshop introduce participants to introduction to 3D modelling with Maya interface, understanding of textures, bump and the Photoshop workflow, lights and rendering principles of animation and project workflow.
Anne Abok, director of Media Village Nigeria has been excited by the presence of Oladeji who actually started the campaign for 3D communication in Lagos at the annual Lagos Comics and Cartoons carnival. According to Anne, the workshop would provide participants a life time opportunity to have greater understanding of the 3D communication and a close contact with the brain behind it.
She told Interval that she was particularly delighted that her organisation, Media Village Nigeria was selected among others to collaborate with the Image Studios to stage the workshops in Nigeria. She is already looking forward to realizing a mass empowerment dreams which her organization has always had after the workshop.
As for Oladeji, this is part of efforts at making the aims and objectives of his foundation, Animation for Africa, to come to reality. Animation for Africa is an initiative by him focused towards training hundreds of Africans in visual effects and animation by the end of 2010.
And he would be launching a campaign in the country later in March to create awareness about the latest auto desk products. His recent work has been on the feature movie "Lion of Judah" which is still in post-production and expected to be out in America this summer.
"Participants will be provided with lecture notes, Maya PLE 8.5, Training DVDs, software and free registration for internet resources. We are planning to open up the 3D animation industry in Nigeria so that it can compliment the home videos and service the visual effects industry world wide while we produce our own (Nigerian) animated films" Oladeji revealed.
The programme as designed would cover three months of intensive training and three months of internship with established animation houses in South Africa at a highly subsidized rate, compared to the cost of doing such in Canada, America or India where there are partners. Already, four Nigerians have benefitted from this arrangement and Oladeji plans to increase that number by ten folds in this present year.
The multi media expert has worked on several projects and adverts and his works can be found in Issues of Faith - a television magazine programme on SABC 1, a TV commercial for Bank PHB, TV commercial for Kenyan Power Authority, SABC I Anthem amongst others.
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