Exploring the Business in Animation with Valentine Ubalua

Valentine Ubalua is the founder & CEO of Nicademia. He is an alumnus of Lagos Business School and a graduate of Computer Science from Nnamdi Azikiwe University. He is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and proficient in Web design, web development, PHP, Game development, mobile app development and lots more. He has over 10years of industry experience in ICT, Media & the Entertainment industry. He has worked for the government, Etisalat and other brands. He is the producer of Nigeria's most popular educational animation series 'MUDI Goes To School' with over 2million weekly views, showing on 7 local and international TV channels including DSTV.

Below is a summary of the interview Exploring The Business in Animation with Valentine Ubalua

He mentioned that his interest in animation had come from his early Fascination in Information and Communication Technology, ICT. He recounted that his journey into the animation industry had been borne out of the learning disability, dyslexia, that he was faced with while growing up. He always found himself at the bottom of the class but could describe a cartoon show minutes after watching it on TV. On reaching the university, He took to converting his notes to audio-visuals, with graphical representations. This eventually saw him finish among the top of his class.

He described the process of animation as a system of creating motion with different images or drawings while pointing out that animation was a very tasking job. He stated that they were different areas in animation and anyone could get into the industry if they had passion and time for it. He also discussed the dimensions in Animation such as 2D which are flat images and 3D which are 360 images in motion.

Speaking on the process of making animation he said that it often started from a good story as compared to filmmaking leading to the animation which is at the last phase. He said there was the conceptualization stage, scripting, after which a storyboard artist does a rough sketch of each scene, then the animatics after which the clients approve the project. He said that animation could be tasking as the client sometimes may not approve a scene and that would mean starting the process all over again. Even to rendering the final output he said that two supercomputers were needed and this often took two days to complete, this he said all added to the cost of production. Even as the industry was still young as compared to other countries, he expressed his optimism saying that he believed that Africa would soon be the next destination for future animation productions.

He went on to say that animation was a gold mine as it was the richest in the entertainment industry as the animation market was worth 404 billion dollars globally. He spoke further saying that animation productions lasted forever even as money could also be made from branding characters on valuable items and merchandising. He remarked also saying that animation was a lucrative business in Nigeria if one is good at it and is able to also show their works to the public so people can patronize them.

He called on parents to help expose their children and equip them with digital skills. He also put in that interested persons could learn the process of animation from start to finish over the web or they could go over to any training institute. He lamented on the dearth of animators in the Nigerian Animation industry as they were not enough skilled hands.

He also motioned on youths to acquire digital skills that would equip them and would also set them apart.