Animation: Bringing stories to life

Daniel Muli (R), an animator shares a light moment with Jeremiah Nzuki on the sidelines of a StoryMoja Hay Festival event. Animation has enormous applications in communication. Photo credit: Pius Maundu

Watch what media content you grow up accessing. According to Daniel Muli an animator, illustrator and musician at Just a Band, it can influence your career! 

Addressing attendants at this year’s Storymoja Hay Festival, Muli confirmed that the films and comic books whose content he grew up imbibing inspired his career. Lucky for him, animation is cool!

Today, animation is the new normal. With technology and the growing artistic community in Kenya, Muli visualizes animation going places. His presentation majored on explaining the basics and prospects of animation to an enthusiastic audience of teenagers numbering about 120. 

Animation is all about tricking the eye of the existence of motion, offered Muli to the audience, which judging from the ambivalence, begged for more convincing.  “Persistence of vision is the guiding principle in animation,” he explained, before he turned to the projection screen for an elaboration graphic.

To animate, one needs to have a compelling story to tell, advised Muli, and added that it is the onus of the artist to decide whether choose writing, filming or animation. Mentioning Shriek, he offered that some stories are better presented in certain media and not others. 

Armed with this wisdom, Muli has been instrumental in developing amazing projects. Judging from the cheers that filled the National Museum’s Ford Hall Auditorium, on enlisting  Know Zone and Tinga Tinga Tales, the excitation of the attendants was clear. But it was the involvement of students in developing miniature animation projects enthused attendants to animation. Guided by Muli and their creativity, and working on Monkey Jam 3.0, two pairs of students developed cool boxing bouts, to the applause of the remaining audience. 

When I sought to establish how teenagers could use animation, Muli offered that in animation, students have a great medium to send their messages home. Echoing this response, Chris Karani, 12, a budding Brook House School poet and comics writer owned that he is convinced that animation is a great way to help him convey his ideas better.

Similar sentiments were common amongst the session attendants. Jeremiah Nzuki, a music teacher at Lavington’s Gifted Hands School, for instance, agreed that schools stand to benefit from animation. “Animation is here to address the poor reading culture in Kenya,” he offered, grinning. 

Nzuki opined that by animating teaching materials, teachers would greatly enhance delivery.  The point of convergence is that animation is a great way of bringing stories to life.