
--
Draw4Life brings the world of animation to learners from underprivileged communities at CTIAF --
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:40
--
Now in its sixth year, the Cape Town International Animation Festival (CTIAF) has gained a reputation as an unmissable opportunity for animation professionals to gather, network and learn. But this March, organising body Animation South Africa reached out beyond the professional community to bring the festival to passionate youngsters who might not otherwise have the chance to discover this world.
The festival curated an outreach programme at Isivivana Centre in Khayelithsa, featuring a half-day workshop in the fundamentals of life drawing hosted by Draw4Life, an initiative by Sparks Flew Development Studio and Animation SA.
Some 70 learners from Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and Hout Bay took part in the workshop, which was led by animator and character artist Jac Hamman and other animation professionals who volunteered their time for the cause.
Launched in 2016, Draw4Life is a foundational course in the principles of drawing for animation, offered pro bono by Sparks Flew Development Studio to at-risk teens in the Cape with the collaboration of PASCAP (Partners with After School Care Projects), Animation SA, and The Animation School.
The 10-week programme is aimed at discovering talent and raising awareness of animation as a career choice among secondary school learners. As the industry grows, so does the need for talented young animators coming up through the ranks, says founder and Animation SA Head of Marketing, Julia Smuts Louw. We started Draw4Life to try and address this need with the limited resources we had, at the level where the intervention can make a big difference to later choices: secondary school.
The first D4L group included learners from two high schools in Mitchells Plain: Aloe High and Tafelsig. Sparks Flew worked with PASCAP and The Animation School to identify the first group of eight talented teens, selected on the strength of portfolios and motivations.
Each week s class involved a fun but intensive 2.5 hour workshop in various aspects of drawing for animation, taught by high-caliber industry professionals, including award-winning director Daniel Snaddon. The learners were taught how to observe and draw bodies in motion: the essence of drawing for animation. The models were all students of different physical disciplines, including karate, jiu jitsu, belly dancing, ballet, and acting. D4L was particularly honoured to host Elizabeth Nienaber, a lead ballerina of the Cape Town City ballet.
The classes were so valuable that paying students from The Animation School began attending them as well a great point of pride for us, considering the school ranks among the top 20 worldwide, says Smuts Louw.
The final two classes took place at Triggerfish Animation Studios in Bergvliet, where the learners were exposed to a busy working studio and received classes in digital drawing from character designer Philipe Rios. This allowed them to get their first taste of using professional animators tools such as Wacom and Cintiq tablets.
Our biggest coup was that all eight Draw4Life learners were invited to follow up the drawing course with a short course at Digital Canvas Academy, free of charge, over the December break, says Smuts Louw. Everyone was keen. All we needed to make it happen was find them tablets. Direct Distribution Services in Cape Town came to the rescue with seven Wacom tablets they had going spare - exactly the number we needed, as it turned out.
One student who particularly shone in the course, Dawood Salie, was awarded a tablet to keep. He received his prize during the prestigious Student Awards event at CTIAF, along with his fellow 2016 Draw4Life alums.
The Isivivana workshop was the programmes most ambitious event to date. It proved that the Draw4Life format can work for bigger groups, says Smuts Louw. However, while wed love to run more once-off events that will expose as many school-goers as possible to the idea of animation as a career, wed like to keep the course itself quite intimate. Rather than offering bigger classes, we want to roll Draw4Life out in more cities, and expand the impact in this way.
Animation SA will continue to nurture relationships with all interested graduates and help them look for opportunities to pursue animation as a career. Eventually, with the right sponsorship, we would like to be able to fund a scholarship ourselves, says Smuts Louw. The talent we have discovered so far leads us to believe this is totally achievable.
For more info, please contact Julia Smuts Louw at marketing@animationsa.org
Related Articles
-- --
-- --
-- Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...