Major Challenge of Animators Is Funding- Elegba
By Joshua Olaleye
Founder and convener of the biggest comic festival in Africa: LagosComicCon, Mr. Ayodele Elegba said that funding is the major headache because getting a loan in Nigeria now is tough especially for the creative business.
Elegba, who spoke to Gtechnews noted that collaboration is needed to outlive the current generation because comic has almost gone into extinct until more recently that it was revived by people like them.
He disclosed that in the early 80’s comics were quite popular with every child borrowing from the library or buying one. But that era went into extinct gradually and this current generation do not have an inkling of what “We enjoyed while growing up and based on that was the reason for convening this yearly event”.
He speaks on this and others.
What is LagosComicCon?
LagosComicCon is the biggest comic festival in Africa with the size of 4000 to 5000 people in attendance last year. This year is no different. The aim is bringing creative people together from the comic, gaming, animation and the book industry to come together and collaborate in which people network and do some business to business(B2B) and also get access to buy some products and services from other business exhibiting their products at the event.
- Comic, animation these are new with the conventional movies in Nollywood, why comic and animation?
I sincerely believe that comic is the foundation for films, games,animations because most of this platforms always have one join or the other before they go live, I felt there is no better platform than comics, so we are trying to bring back that comic and animation films to the industry, many people have forgotten about comics so we are trying to bring it back .
Why do you think there’s a need to collaborate?
I think, we are going to do better if we collaborate because collaboration is the future and there are so many people doing great stuff but nobody knows about them, so if we collaborate and they are able to get out there getting the space and mostly i realised that people from the film industry they want to employ somebody doing story board for them and can’t find them but in Lagos comic con you can find them all here for example the animators, gamers, film makers and discuss business in which people have began connecting here in LagosComicCon because “united we stand divided we fall ”
What are the challenges of being an animator in Nigeria?
The challenges of being an animator and running a business are mostly what people face in terms of power, social amenities, funding because getting a loan in Nigeria now is tough especially for the creative business. I know the government is doing well for the agriculture sector but I think we need to start focusing on the creative business and create loans for them to be able to access and do stuff, have been fortunate to travel abroad for festivals and I realised that there’s nothing they do over there that cannot be replicated here in Nigeria . It’s just that abroad they take care of talents but here you have to struggle and hustle, so if the government can intervene it would be very much better.
What is the acceptability ratio of comics in Nigeria?
In abroad it is a multi- million dollar market but what we are doing in LagosComicCon is to bring attention to Nigeria in the likes of Netflix to come and pick animated movies and give them deals running into billions
How can LagosComicCon platform project the western animation characters?
I am sure if you have gone around you would agree with me there’s no white character, LagosComicCon is 100 per cent indigenous local content because we are trying to give hope to the younger ones by giving them Heroes they can look up to.
What is your advice for the upcoming animators and others interested in tapping into it?
My advice is that never give up, keep at it, be consistent because if you live your life based on money you will live a wretched life, live your life based on vision and dreams because whenever there’s dream there is vision.