The pilot episode of an animated TV Series, The Ekspats, has been selected in competition at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival. In his announcement of the festival line-up, the Artistic Director at Annecy Festival, Marcel Jean, said, “For the very first time, a Nigerian series will be competing, which clearly demonstrates how animation is developing on the African continent, three years after our tribute to African animation.”
The Ekspats is a fish-out-of-water comedy TV series about an all-American family that relocates to Nigeria. It is the first project from Lagos-based G2 Animation (www.g2animation.com), an ecosystem of some of the top animation companies in the Nigerian market. The pilot episode creative look is a blend of 3D and 2D animation styles and is directed by Ron Myrick, Adebisi Adetayo and Mbuotidem Johnson.
2D Animation Director on the project, Mbuotidem Johnson, founder of Basement Animation Studio and part of the Executive Committee of Animation Nigeria, is excited about this major milestone for the industry commenting, “over the last few years, there has been much more capacity building for animation in the country, and with the support from partners like the French Embassy in Nigeria, who have been enabling and promoting talent development, we’re now able to convert this into high quality stories, as this Annecy selection has showed.”
Adetayo, 3D Animation Director on the project and the founder of 32ad Animation Studios, the company behind Nigeria’s first animated feature film, Lady Buckit and the Motley Mopsters, released in 2020, believes that “while we have a growing talent pool to create high quality work, we are still in need of a more enabling and structured market environment that will help unlock the full potential of our animation industry and attract greater international collaboration and investment.”
Bridging and collaborating with international partners are challenges that G2 Animation hopes to address. The company has tapped into LA-based Ron Myrick, a US animation industry veteran with a career spanning over forty years. Ron is an animator, director, writer, and producer, who has worked for and with companies like Hanna-Barbera, Mattel, Filmation, Disney Television Animation, Warner Bros.
Cristophe Pecot, the Audio-visual Attaché at the French Embassy in Nigeria added, ‘We are very excited for Annecy this year, with not only a film in competition but also market pitches from Nigerian animation talent who will present to the world the rich stories this market has to share.’
The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was created in 1960 and holds from June 9 to 15 in Annecy, France. It is the largest global event dedicated to animation and over the course of a week, the event brings together the biggest names in the field and celebrates the creativity and diversity of animation styles and techniques.
