300 SECONDS with Hamid Ibrahim

Hamid Ibrahim, Founder and Creative Operations of Kugali Media - the animation company behind Disney’s first African animations series Iwájú.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF?

Hey, everyone. How you guys doing? My name is Hamid Ibrahim. I'm one of the co-founders of Kugali and Head of Creative Operations. Born in Uganda, then when I was one year old, I went to Kenya. Or technically, my mom carried me to Kenya. So I spent my ten first years in Kenya. And then when I was turning ten, I moved back to Uganda and I spent time with my grandma. From there, with my grandma. I moved to the UK ten years ago. Now I'm 28, so yeah, I've been in the UK for ten years, so that's generally just geographically a bit about me.

HOW DID YOUR UPBRINGING ENCOURAGE YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN ANIMATION AND VISUAL EFFECTS?

About the career and what inspired me to go down this path. There are really two key moments. The first one is there was an advert that was playing. They referenced the Mona Lisa much more than just art. I don't know what the advert was I don't know what it was advertising. But, you know, you look at something and it really hits you. The Mona Lisa image really hit me, right, because when I saw that image, I went to research Leonardo da Vinci. I researched the Mona Lisa, then i saw it's da Vinci who drew it. And if you know anything about da Vinci, he lived an incredible life. And that was very inspiring to me. And from that moment I got into art and drawing.

Now and then a thing that really nurtured my love for animation was there was The Lion King playing. I was watching The Lion King. Now as a kid, you don't expect the cartoons to speak your language. Being from Uganda or Kenya or anyone Africa. And then, you know, they go "Hakuna matata" now. That's Swahili and now that captures my attention as a kid and it makes me pay attention to the film. I really enjoyed the film. Now, I didn't really appreciate the film then because I was really young when I got older. That's when it got to really, really appreciate it.

CONGRATULATIONS ON KUGALI'S UNPRECEDENTED PARTNERSHIP WITH DISNEY! IN THREE WORDS, WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM IWAJU?

Our goal in this project. The project itself is the first of its kind project. It's literally record breaking. It's going to the history books. Now usually when something like that happens, there's a lot of pressure, obviously, but I'm going to add that pressure on top of ourselves, right? I need this to be one of the best animations Disney has made. That's the goal. What to Expect. Just expect a really fun ride. I can't tell you much. Obviously, as you know, I'm watching my words, very carefully. It's going to be a very fun, enjoyable feast of visual storytelling that most people are never going to forget. It's going to be one of the things I wanted to stay in your mind forever.

CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT AUGMENTED REALITY (AR).

Now, one other thing Kugali is focusing on a lot is augmented reality, and that's because it's a new thing. It's not new, new, but it's relatively new thing to come to the consumer market. And one thing we try and be as Kugali, we try now innovate to try to be ahead of the game versus playing catch up. There's a quote that really annoys me every time i hear it. "Anything happens in the world, expect it to happen in Africa five years later”, in this case with augmented reality, we're one of the top augmented reality creators in the world and most of people working for us from back home. And we do educate them to make sure they get to the world class level.

That means instead of Kugali, chasing in people, we want in augmented reality, at least we know where they are as the ground is being developed. You know, there's a big advantage that happens when you're there in the beginning of when an industry is being developed. You get a lot of ground in that stage and Kugali is making sure we cover that.

AROUND 26% OF THE AFRICAN POPULATION HAVE ACCESS TO MOBILE INTERNET. HOW CAN THE POPULATION WITHOUT THE INTERNET AND SMARTPHONES ACCESS THE WORK OF KUGALI?

Now there's a question of AR requiring smartphone or internet and a lot of Africa doesn't have Internet. Now that's a bad thing right now. But if you think about it, they are projecting in a set number of years, a good chunk of people from Africa are going to be on the Internet, and that's going to be a whole economy. People are preparing for that. There's going to be a new market in the Internet, let's put it that way. It's going to be a more unique market, a more broader market facing Africa on the Internet.

KUGALI IS MADE UP OF A DIVERSE TEAM FROM ACROSS AFRICA, IS THIS INTENTIONAL?

In terms of Kugali, having a diverse team across Africa, that kind of just happened because it's in the DNA of what Kugali is. Kugali is very collaborative. If you're going to tell African stories and you only have people from one part of Africa, you're not really telling African stories, you're telling that part of Africa's story. So it's just in our DNA in that we are trying to tell Africa's stories. So it just makes sense. If we're doing it right, we're going to have people from all over Africa. That's why we're very Pan-African, we have people from every single corner of Africa.

WHAT ADVICE CAN YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE LOOKING TO WORK FOR A COMIC BOOK OR ANIMATION STUDIO LIKE KUGALI?

The advice I'd give somebody who's trying to walk in a comic book studio like Kugali or animations studio like Kugali. I'd say focus on getting good. As I said, the Internet. I'm going to say it over and over again. The Internet is going to open up so many doors for you. There's so much knowledge out there especially if you're in this field of animation. You need a computer to do animation and there’s a lot of free software out there. For example, Blender etc. There's quite a few of them, which are really high quality. So you can actually teach yourself online right now to a very high degree.

So I say even if there's no education around you, I think that'll be the first step. Just go through that and it will also allow you to to see if you actually really like animation, being an animator or being a VFX artist, or you just like the idea of it. It will allow you to separate the two. So I'd say, do that and then you'll see.