 Alright, welcome back from that very very interesting interview with Dr. Ipiana and Grashamayangi. Now we move on to something else on Spotted Tech. Today we are talking about animation as an art. How do we bridge the gap in the animation industry? And for this I've been joined by experts about to introduce them on my right just next to me right here. We have Naftali Muriuki, he's the creative director of NAFKI CREATIONS, also the chairman of Association of Animation Artists Kenya. Next on the other side, we have Chief Nyamua, who's the creative director and co-founder of Pre-Hand Studios and Pungulupa. Then we have Rachel Muara, she's the digital artist and animation lecturer at Multimedia University. I actually went to Multimedia, she's also the project leader of the ALMASI project. Glad to have you with us. Thank you. Okay, so I'll let each one of you to tell us a little bit about what you do. I understand that you all come from the same association but you have individual projects that you're doing. Let me start with you. Great, awesome. So my name is Naftali Muriuki. I am a creative, I do animation, motion graphics, work design. I am a creative in different aspects and I'm the creative director of NAFKI CREATIONS, Multimedia Studio and currently I serve within the community of animators in Kenya as the chair of the Association of Animation Artists Kenya. Alright, thank you. Thank you. Hi. To you, Chief Nyamua. Yes, my name is Chief Nyamua. I'm the creative director of Pungulupa and Pre-Hand Studios. I'm also a member of the association with the other president, Naftali and the main project that Pungulupa is engaged in currently is something called Uli Antata's African Nursery Rhymes which is a 2D animated African nursery rhyme series that follows two children, brother and sister duo, who discover these magical instruments in their house and using these instruments they attract a big giant bird which is like the guardian and it takes them to discover all the nursery rhymes all around Africa. Okay, quite interesting and we'll get into that later on. First, Muara. My name is Muara, Muara Kumu. I'm a film and animation lecturer at Multimedia University. I'm a digital artist and my pet project is the Almasi project. Almasi is a little girl who goes into a mangrove forest with her cousins and they just have fantastic adventures all over Kenya in the greatest outdoor playground in the world which is the Kenyan wilderness. Okay, interesting and we have short clips of this trailer that we'll be showing you just so that you understand what they're actually doing but before we get to that you know we have different understanding of what animation is personally I'm usually confused between, is there a difference between cartoon and animation and anime? No. Do you have it? It's just different words for the same thing. It's fine, I actually like the word cartoon because more people know it and yeah it's all the same things, images moving, drawn images moving, it can sometimes be puppets like you saw this Pinocchio recently it was entirely puppets, don't know drawings there. Okay. Professor would probably have a more concise definition. Go ahead. Oh, no it's just drawings, so this is Almasi, it's just drawings coming to life so these are the mangrove forests at Mida Creek and this is Almasi and her cousins going to play in the forest and they literally are, there are thousands of drawings, some of them have a deformer in them so that we can make the legs bend when they walk and then like this black cloud is thousands of different drawings of a black cloud, that's what it is, it's magic for artists how to make your drawings come to life. All right, so that's what animation is about, making drawings come to life. Exactly. And the same thing with cartoons. I would say images because sometimes it's not drawings, sometimes it's puppets, you have stop motion animation, you have 3D animation where it's a digital puppet, so I would say it's a sequence of images that are accompanied by sounds sometimes, cartoons, most people know cartoons. So the easiest way that we usually, because a lot of people know cartoons, so the easiest way that we usually tell people about animation is I do cartoons, but looking at animation it's quite deep because besides cartoon, animation is well employed when it comes to VFX, let's say for instance when somebody is doing a movie and they cannot manage to do a certain effect, they create digital doubles using animation and then for the person who is watching they cannot know the difference between the actual person and a digital double which was used to kind of create that effect that could have not been achieved using the camera. But as Chieva said it's just, we usually say animation is an illusion of life because one of the things that we usually do is it's kind of we study a lot and look because all the things that we create relate to what we do as humans, so it's more of looking into the things that we do as humans, you do them within the computer, but also you are given the opportunity to exaggerate more or else break the rules. We are little bit creative, more creative. What goes into creating animation, we usually love watching animation, I personally love animation, but I know there's a lot that goes into it, before you watch that one hour, thirty minute animation movie, there's a lot, so let me ask the professor to tell me. Well this is Almasia watching and these three kids shelling beans, there were thousands of drawings of people's hands in that picture, there were thousands of drawings, my animator Cheryl sat down and he, well first you have to film it, so it's like you have to do the job twice because you know someone was sent to go to buy peas, two women had to sit and shell peas and to do this and then he took photos, he took video of what they were doing and then he went and drew it, he separated them out into each little movement that they were making with their hands as they were shelling the peas and probably it's the first time it's happened in the digital universe, you know, there are no other, nobody else is shelling peas in the digital world, that is what my animators are doing, they are creating their world in the digital world so that the next generation of children will get to see themselves and what they see around them every day in the digital world. Wow, that's amazing, that takes a lot, you have to go out and shoot it and then come back and draw it and bring it to life, so how you know how long does that take just to come up with the production, final production? Oh, I've been working on Almasi, the first sketch was my daughter was, I was looking for an African girl, I realized I had one in the house, I said to her, it's done there, I drew her, she was 3, she is now 18, yes, that's how long it took me, I did the first pilot when I was doing my masters in 2008, that was in 3D animation and I came home to Kenya to try and do it and it took me about a couple of years to discover that I don't actually, I'm not going to be able to do it in 3D animation, just the challenges of getting it done at all and so I started in, I started, I learned to do 2D animation and I trained my students to do 2D animation and then in 2018 I employed one girl to sit down because you have to sit down six to eight hours a day to actually do the work and she made the first pilot for Almasi in 2018 and then we took it for critiquing and then we did it again, used the feedback, did it again, so we released episode 1 and 2 in 2021 but if we had plenty of funding, you know, I've got two animators in my studio, if we had plenty of funding, we've got 10 machines, 10 animators, I could produce an episode, a 10 minute episode in six to eight weeks. Okay, so it's the resources that we don't have in Kenya? It's the resources that I personally don't have. You personally? Yes, I think that's because... We have the resources in Kenya. Alright, so in Kenya we actually have the resources to do 3D animation because sometime back I was talking with a guy, an animator, he does graphics 2D mostly because he said it takes a lot of, I don't know, time to do 3D and you know... It takes a lot of processing power, that's what it takes. Yeah, it takes a lot of processing power and in terms of bringing your vision to life in the digital world, it takes a lot, a set of direct, directorial skills that I did not have to bring my vision to life in 3D. Why? And for you our chief memoir, you are a director, how easy is it for you? Is it easier? I would say it's the best analogy is cooking. It all depends on what type of meal you're trying to have. You know, there's fast food which you can walk in like Sanford, you know, you walk in, walk out 5 minutes and then there are other meals that you have to first of all book, you have to be on a waiting list and then you go there, you have to book 3 months in advance, you go... So that's the range of animation you have. There's a simplest flip book animation where you can get a little drawing book and then you write in the dog ears, you just make slightly change, like something like a bird flying. So you have different positions of wings and the bird in different positions, you draw them in your corner of your book. It's a test that I usually do when I travel around doing workshops with kids and I want them to be enthusiastic about the art form, we do that. So they draw in the corner and then you flip the edges and watch the subtle changes in the drawings. So you have the wings in different positions and you flip the bird flies. So that's a simple form of animation. Then you have much more elaborate, like the studio releases the big Hollywood ones which they take four years, you know, producing, it involves multiple countries, they outsource sometimes to India or Philippines. So it all depends, no two animations are made the same. I can speak about mine personally, which we saw. The genesis of our project, Uli and Tata's African Nasiri Rhymes started when my son was born and for me animation is primarily about story. It's not about the technique or the software, whether it's 2D, 3D, all of that is secondary. It depends on the story you want to tell and then after you've determined the story that you want to tell, then you choose what medium will serve that story. If it's is it a mature audience, maybe they want more photorealistic looking characters or is it a younger audience where you have more simple characters, that type of thing. So the primary thing I would say is story and story is what dictates everything else. Okay, so you need to have the story. Yes, that's the most important part. So I was just finishing. So my son was born, I realized there were no African Nasiri Rhymes. I didn't want to sing Baby Shark to him. I didn't want to sing Baba Black Ship or all those other things. I was like, where are our songs? And you know, when I started asking around, I realized it wasn't just my problem. All the other young parents had the same problem where they were not finding or they could not remember themselves African Nasiri Rhymes. So I was like, why not we use animation since kids love it, travel around the country. And we went on a process of looking for funding. And thankfully, we now have funding for, you know, about seven episodes now, which will keep us busy for much of next year, just traveling around the country looking for these rhymes. Wow, amazing. I think that's really awesome. And we'll have the two of them play. But before that, let me come to you, the president. How do you see the animation industry in Kenya? What are the gaps that we have? As of now, animation industry, we have a number of gaps. First of all, you see funding is a big thing when it comes to film and animation, because for a creator to sit and produce, they need to just sit, concentrate on telling the story, concentrate on building quality. But where funding lacks, then people end up not having time to sit down and do this kind of production. So one of the things challenges that we're having is that you'll find a lot of animators in Kenya are doing commercial work, which is TVC, just commercials, 30 second commercials, so that they can manage just to pay the bills. Whereas let's say, for instance, if we had funding, somebody can work for a year or two just to concentrate on narratives or else, episode your stories. So that's one of the biggest challenges that we have. And then also, when it comes to the capital of entry, when it comes to animation, it's quite on the higher side, let's say, for instance, for somebody who is doing 3D, because when it comes to rendering and also, let's say, for instance, buying software, it's quite expensive. Nevertheless, they are open source softwares, but now you also find it's dependent on, let's say, for instance, where did you go to school? Because let's say, for instance, if you went to school and they taught you something like 3D Studio Max, then you'll have to take time to switch maybe to something that's open source. And then another thing that we have as a challenge is, and these cards are cross-bored when it comes to the creative sector, you'll find that a lot of people aren't working as a unit. Let's say, for instance, if you are to look into the western world for a production that's done in the western world, you find it's a lot of people doing very small things to make the production become true. But over here, you find that all of us are trying to do the same thing. There's no synergy in between people collaborating. So these are some of the things that we are trying to tackle from the association perspective, whereas, let's say, for instance, tomorrow we'll be having our international and nation day, it's supposed to be 27th and 28th, where we are generally saying, as a community, can we come together and have discussions? Can we come together and look at the gaps that we have in between us and see how we can collaborate? And also, also doing, let's say, for instance, a mapping of equipments that we have around. Because let's say, for instance, you might have chief, he might have a very good computer, but he doesn't use the computer all the time. But can we get to a point that, let's say, for instance, we can say in Kenya, we have like 10 people with good workstations, that if somebody, let's say like Moira was to do her project, we can use these machines to kind of fasten the work. So they are different gaps, but slow but sure, we are trying to solve them. And within, it's just a matter of time. You're slowly getting there to where you went to be. So now, I want us to have some of the trailers play so that we will watch and enjoy. Are those there ready? The cousin screamed and started running. But our machine stood still, rooted to the spot, staring into the darkness. Then the black cloud sank down and faded away into the ground. She walked out, bees humming around her, birds chirping, her eyes open to every new thing. She saw something hanging from a branch. It wasn't a leaf, it wasn't a fruit, and it moved. It was alive. Somebody was coming out. Somebody with crumpled wings had slowly, slowly unfolded. The black and orange wings dried, and the beautiful creature flew up and circled Almas' head. Almas' butterfly led her off through the mangroves, skipping over the tree roots, fiddler crabs diving into their holes on all sides, sea glass found herself growing smaller, smaller to the size of the butterfly. Its wings spread, waiting. A ray of sunlight crept over the windowsill and glinted on the sea glass, lying on the table next to Almas' bed. It sparkled and shimmered. A sudden flash lighting her face, she opened her eyes and smiled. My diamond, she whispered. My magic diamond. She stretched out her hand and picked it up, turning it this way and that. It shone with different colors. Aunties set down a bowl of beans for them to clean. The children laughed and chatted about this and that, but the conversation soon wandered back to the mangroves, and the black cloud, they knew they had all been seen. You have just watched Almasi and Uli Tata. Yes, I mean, it's very interesting and those are 2D animations. I'm loving it, especially that our children can now learn, you know, Lua and other languages, our local languages through cartoons, you know, through animation. It's very, very interesting. So, yeah, let me now get back to you. Let's talk about what should do it and NFTs. So, many people don't know about NFTs, so tell us a little bit about that and how you're using it. NFTs are cryptocurrency things. It's basically a picture with a bit of code attached and that's it's unique. That's the only picture with that piece of code attached. And the Almasi NFTs are set up as a game, so there's 10,000 of them. You buy a set of 10 or 20 and in order to appear in the credits of Almasi Episode 3, you would need to collect a set, buy and sell and collect a set of 10 characters. So, the characters in the NFTs are all the characters from Season 1 of Almasi. And that's my big fundraising idea at the moment. And Kenya's biggest NFT collection and they're coming out tomorrow, actually, for International Animation Day. And they'll be available on OpenSea, which is the biggest NFT marketplace and they're on Ethereum, which is the main codable blockchain. And yeah, it's, I mean, they cost about $15, $16 each at the moment. Yeah, they're a great way for Kenyans to onboard into cryptocurrency and they'll get to buy pictures, art, which references Kenyan things. You know, the children are holding Uteos and Kyondos and Kikapus. The materials are like gong oils where it's combined with one of my paintings of the gong hills and goat skin material and Mabati materials. The NFTs all have a number of different traits and then in the collection of 10,000, they'll be graded for value based on the rarity, the collected rarity of each trait. So, the site will rank them. Because when you buy, it's like, it's a magic basket. You know, you buy 10 and then they'll be minting for 60 days or you'll get your 10, all the same pre-revealed image. And when the minting is finished or when they're sold out, I'll press the button and you'll find out what you got. And you'll have to buy and sell to get whatever you, to get the full set if you want to get your name in the credits. And from an artist's point of view, that is the most important thing about NFTs because like if I buy a painting from you and I buy it for 40k and then in 10 years you're very famous and I sell it for 400k, you'll never see any of that 400k. But an NFT in its contract has 10% going to the artist. So the time you sell it for 400k, I'll still get another 40k. And that will just happen all over and over. So the point of an NFT collection like mine is to encourage buying and selling. So there'll be a different set of NFTs that you have to collect to appear in the credits of each episode over the course of the next year. And I don't know if you have photos of that from your website. My producer will advise me as we go on with the rest of the questions so that we just get a good understanding of how that operates. What do you think about that? My funding, our funding strategy for Pungulupa is a bit more traditional. It was our pilot episode, not this, our pilot episode was funded by the Kenya Film Commission. We are very proud of that, that it came from public funding. So it was made for Kenyan kids primarily at first and it was also funded with Kenyan money, so I'm very happy. And also we also put in our own money for the pilot episode. The one that we went to Kaka Mega, you know, traveling around the forest, that was a good start. And then later on we held an event, invited stakeholders and managed to get funding from the French Embassy as well. And it's a full-time job. The thing about animation is that to succeed it has to be a team sport. You have to have people specializing. Otherwise you don't get good enough in your lane, you don't get good enough in your domain. So even the word alone animation is deceptive because under any animation that you watch there are many different roles that go into that. There are storyboard artists, there are screenwriters, there are people who just do illustration alone, no animating, just illustrating the frames. You have the animators themselves, you need a producer, very important. So it's a whole team. It's a team sport, just like the way you have in film. And of course producers are as important in animation as they are in film, even though there are not so many animation producers. We were lucky that we have a very good animation producer, who also happens to be my spouse. So her name is Sara, she's probably watching. So with everybody specializing in their lane, you have to go for both traditional and non-traditional sources to fund raise. And we're getting better at it. Since we started over 10 years ago. And now I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, with AI coming in the picture and everything, does it make animation easier? Or is it the fear that AI is also coming to take over jobs? Is animation also on the line with this? Well, from where I sit and looking at the possibilities, AI is a big game changer. But within the animation industry, if you adapt it early and learn, it becomes something that you can build upon and make work easier. That's number one. And also it becomes something that, let's say for instance, it can help you explore more when it comes to digital story creation and trying to look at different areas. Let's say for instance, beside animation just being an art by itself, there are other form of arts that build on animation. Let's say for instance gaming, VR, that's virtual reality, augmented reality, of which it's kind of a game changer. Because let's say for instance, if you are to consider AI and the whole discussion to do with the metaverse, there is no metaverse without animation. So looking from where I sit, it's a big disruptor, yes, but it's something that you can build upon. If we are open to learning and adapt quickly to it, it's something that a lot of animators will appreciate over time. As animators, both of you, are you open to AI, to adopting AI, incorporating it in your work? Let me start with you. I practice openness. I think that everything can be used as a tool to get what I want done. But it's a bit difficult to know what stands to take with AI. I asked my 18-year-old daughter yesterday what she thought about AI and she shouted at me for 10 minutes. She was like, yeah, she ended up with, yeah, tell me you're a no talent waste of space without telling me you're a no talent waste of space. She gave me a whole thing about how her and she's in art, she's in college in London, she's in sixth form college in London. I thought, you know, very forward-thinking kind of place. Me and my friends hate it. I thought it was a good thing at first and then I started seeing what people were doing with it. She gave me a whole tutorial, look at this, look at this, look at this, she kept sending me images. You can just tell that AI generated and then this one is something that per somebody worked on and it's just disrespectful. That was the basic thing. It is just disrespectful. You think you can create art by giving a set of instructions to a gadget and what about me? I don't know. I think of an artist as a person who must work to be alive. If they are not working, they're not alive. If their market is destroyed, I mean, if you can tell a gadget to produce a piece of work in the style of Monet, then who's going to buy Monet? Exactly. Which would be absolutely fine if we all had the big universal income and we all had food coming in. Our bank accounts were just full. We didn't have to worry about where we were going to get money to live from. AI would be great if it was used for wealth distribution. Maybe one day we'll get there. Yes, I'm sure we will. Okay, what's your take on it? I think it depends very much on how a studio defines itself. At Pungulupa, freehand, we don't define ourselves as animators. We define ourselves as storytellers primarily. Animation is a tool. If there's another tool that's going to make some punishing painstaking work easier, by all means, story is the priority. If there's something that can remove all the grunt work, there's a lot of grunt work. There are the animators who break their backs, who cannot walk. There are even these practices that we have to do standing up every half hour so that you don't get back pains. If there are tools that can help that be easier, well and good. But of course, there are IP issues if the art being used for this generative AI is taken without consent. That is an issue. Artists should be aware. I had an interesting case where there was a client who came and asked for 500 illustrations and that was the first time in my whole career anybody has asked for 500 illustrations. I even reached out to the lawyer and I said, do you have any experience with AI contracts and there's none. So even the lawyers are playing catch up. There are clauses that you have to put into the contract called AI derivative rights that if somebody uses your artwork to train an AI to produce art in your style, you should retain rights to and the lawyers also have to play catch up to being able to write these clauses into our contract. So generally, I like to see where is the value being captured and move upstream. I think the value is in story. Even now when you look at something like Pixar, many people don't know but when you see an animation like Kung Fu Panda, Pixar, it was entirely animated in India but people don't know that because the IP is being held in America. So already we are using humans in the way people use AI just outsourcing it to different countries. I don't see a big difference. It's still capitalism at the end of the day. It's still that structure. The problem is not AI. AI would be a wonderful thing for humanity if we were not living under an economic system that meant that you were paid that basically you cannot live without a wage. That's why AI is a problem. But if we were not in this wage economy where people had to earn money from wages, then I would be a wonderful thing. People could work less. So that's a different discussion. It would not be in animation, it would be in economics. But I think all in all, if I have to say, I'm happy about some of the advances. That we're making in technology, all right. I don't know why I had some things to say on it. Oh, no, that's exactly the same thing I said. All right. So now for people that are looking into getting, as we come to a close on this, people that are looking into getting to do animations, to do storytelling, what do they need to do, what do they need to know, give us from a professor's point of view and also you will tell us. What I have observed is that people who don't know how to draw don't stay in animation. That if you really want to make your career in animation, you need to know how to draw. And I'm very clear that everybody can draw. Everybody can draw. I'm bad at drawing. Everybody can draw. You can draw actually before you can walk. And I sometimes give away an artist creation kit to my friends with children. And I have found that the most important section of that thing is that you have to find it in your tidy Kenyan soul to throw the paper on the floor. You actually have to take a wad of paper and throw it on the floor like this and let the children lie down on that paper, pick up their pencils and draw. And everybody can draw. It's just that we all have a number of bad drawings inside before the good drawings can start coming out. And if you can get rid of all your bad drawings, I tell you, five years old, you'll be a brilliant artist for the rest of your life. It gives you a lot of confidence. So I'm starting with the survivors of 844 who come to me and they want to be animators. Then I have to make them sit down and draw. I can do a drawing course for three months, which can make you somewhat able to draw. But the ones who get really good are the ones who finish university and then sit down and draw. And they draw. And you just have to draw. You draw on papers. You draw on your tablet. You draw everywhere. Yeah. Because an animation is a succession of 2D images. Even a film is. You have to know how to create a 2D image to do any animation. Even if you're going to do 3D animation, you still have to know how to place your camera so that we understand what's happening in that screen. Okay. So drawing is fundamental. You have to know how to draw. Yes, it's fundamental. And as she says, you can draw. I've successfully done it with six year olds. I use post-it notes. And you can actually make it do a transform. Six years old. You can do it. I can teach you in 15 minutes. Okay. Interesting. It's not that hard. Yeah. You know, I thought it takes, you have to be born an animator for you to be. But also for those who cannot draw, they shouldn't be discouraged. There are many professions under the animation umbrella. Like something like rigging, for example. They're highly sought after, highly paid professionals. Like right now, for Uli and Tata, we're working with a rigger from Nigeria. For someone who doesn't know what rigging is? So rigging is basically putting joints into a model. So you have, you have various joints. So in a, okay, technical terms, we have two-legged models, bipeds, basically a creature that walks on two legs, four-legged quadrupeds. You have different joints. So you have to put in joints. Anything that move, you need to put in a rig. So if it's fingers, you have that's one, two, three, multiplied by five, 15 on your fingers. Anything that is on your face, that would be your eyebrows, eyes, eyelids, mouth, whatever. Just doing all that, there's no drawing that goes in there. Actually, what would be really helpful if you understand skeletons and if you're just like somebody who, if not animating, would have been a surgical student or something. Somebody who loves skeletons would probably be a good rigger. So it's a big umbrella and there are many professions. Don't let, not having one skill or the other stop you, if you're passionate about it, just come to it and see where you fit in. Okay. Even a storyteller can come and do a good story. You need good storytellers. That can be part of the team, right? Animation is soundtrack driven. Musicians. Okay. Yeah. Voice actors. You know, voice actors rather. Yeah. People like Elsa Fangora who, you might know him as an actor, very good voice actor for animation. There's so many, there's so many, so many aspects to it. Like the only other genre I can think of that is more multidisciplinary than animation is games. Games, employees, every single domain you can think of including physicists. All right. Maybe. Another way to look at it is from, from the pipeline as she was saying, like we usually talk of animation from the technical aspect, mostly the people who are doing the animation. But if you look at the whole value chain and the whole spectrum and the whole pipeline, it employs a lot of people because as Shiva said, the storytellers and all that, all these people become part and parcel of the pipeline and all those become career by themselves. But one of the fundamental things that I think from a technical perspective of anybody who would want to get into animation, for instance, to be an animator, you have to be patient. That's one of the things. You have to be patient. You have to be open to learning by yourself and then learning. Okay. So this is the fundamental. If you can watch paint dry and smile, then you're fine. I think not for me. Also very comfortable with feeling stupid. Okay. Yeah. You have to spend fast. I mean, I uploaded that whole NFT collection yesterday and it took three weeks of feeling stupid and just going to work every day and staring at my computer and trying different things and just feeling really stupid. Speaking of the NFTs, I think I've not been able to get them. But what can people get your website? Oh, follow me on Twitter at Almasi NFTs. I'm showing them all the time, sharing them all the time, Almasi NFTs. Almasi NFTs. Yeah, like 10 tweets a day in different pictures of the different NFTs just there all the time. All right. So yeah, people can get it at Almasi NFTs. Now, what can people get? Just search for Uli and Tata. Uli and Tata's African nursery rhymes and it'll give you all our socials. We're most active on Instagram. Uli and Tata. Uli and Tata's African nursery rhymes. Okay. Talk to us about the event and then how, you know, other animators or retailers can join the association maybe. So basically the event that we'll be having tomorrow and Saturday, it's a community event, but we are open also to having other people on board considering we'll also be having an intermediary event. That's from Faku Gesi. We'll have partnership with Faku Gesi from South Africa where they'll be coming to share their research findings when it comes to animation gaming VR and XR in the African market. We have done a research in different African countries looking at the possibilities of animation gaming and related fields. Be able to employ more people and can we manage to be owners of IP within our sector. And besides that, we'll be having a number of forum discussions and also talks just to try and bridge the gap. Let's say for instance we'll be having, we'll have students who are in animation school. All the animation schools in Kenya will have students joining in the event and also we'll have people like Moira and Chief joining as professionals who have been there in the industry for quite some time. And also we'll have other partners, let's say for instance people who will come to speak to animators about becoming punkable and also looking at the various other arts that build on animation gaming and comics. So it's more of looking at everything that animation covers and also having impactful discussions of where we would want to move as an industry. Okay, where would you want to move as an industry? We would love to see as of now in Kenya, we have only had one feature animation film, that's Terastrom, which was done by Andrew Kaguya last year, would like to see more collaborations. If we can have at least even let's say for instance three animation, then that shows we are growing because three animations, feature film animation would employ a lot of people. So that let's say for instance students who are coming from institutions like where Moira is teaching, they'll come out of school and they'll find a job market. Okay, amazing. Thank you all for coming on board and sharing this amazing insights. At least I know that I can get into the field, but only as a voice actor maybe. I think that's where I'd fit more. And again for sharing your projects and insights, at least people also know that it's a great career option for people that have a passion in animation, right? Thank you for having us. Most welcome. So thank you for staying with us. We've been talking about animation as an art and how to bridge the gap that's there. We've been talking to Naftali, Chiff and Moira. You can get them on their social as they've mentioned. We'll also have this uploaded on YouTube so that you can follow them straight there. We're going to take a short break and then we'll be right back.