M Y S P E C I A L T A L E N T

Larry Balogun, Maintenance Officer

Before animation, I was a graphic artist making drawings I thought looked cool and learned most of my skills on youtube. But I always had this rash of storytelling stuck in my head which I couldn’t stop scratching An urge to add movement to art like Van Gogh’s painting ‘Starry night’ As I was casually skimming through art Youtube channels I found myself watching people the age of 25 making animation to illustrate stories. I tried to make a video like theirs and got hooked on the art of animation.

I got hooked because of the process and the result it presented It was calm and relaxing but at the same time exciting as you worked on frame after frame The result that I got after a session was excitement as my characters and scenery were getting brought to life The taste of victory as I knew I got the movement right was amazing as the challenges of making a fluid motion were hard One key challenge is to try to keep the movement natural by thinking of the principles of animation/life

To make animation you don’t need much, you could make it with paper as well as on digital I find it easier to work on digital so here are some of my favourite programs for animation: FlipaClip (on Ipad); Procreate (on Ipad); Opentoonz (Windows/MacOs); TvPaint (Windows/MacOs)