Thursday, March 18, 2010

Press Release: Job creation in SA animation industry



Triggerfish, along with other prominent home-grown animation studios, is playing an integral role in what has become known as the Animation Industry Development Initiative (AIDI).

The Cape Film Commission (CFC), together with Animation SA launched the first phase of AIDI last year by recruiting fresh, young talent within the Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha communities to undergo animation-related training. The CFC and Animation SA, with the support of the Services Seta, are committed to creating a strong and competitive home-grown animation industry. The overall aim of the AIDI is to create 10 000 jobs within the animation industry by 2020.

All five interns that were placed at Triggerfish for a 6-month period, are now employed full-time to work on the studio’s first animated feature film, Zambezia.

“We’ve been very impressed with how quickly the interns were brought up to speed and both the studio as well as the interns have benefitted enormously”, says Mike Buckland, senior producer at Triggerfish. “The initiative is a great opportunity for talented, young animators to work with the some of the best people in the industry”, he adds.

Four of the interns are graduates of the Animation School in Cape Town (Langa Ntombela, Ivan van den Heever, Sean Wilkins and Jovan Janari) while Thabe Ntebe studied animation for 2 years at Boston Media House in Johannesburg.

"I think the programme at Triggerfish is extremely useful because it offers specialised training which is essential to skills growth and finding your niche”, says Thabe Ntebe.

Triggerfish is synonymous with industry development in South Africa and co-founded the first national animation body, Animation SA, which now has over 1800 members across southern Africa. Pin It

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