Zog was animated in Cape Town by Triggerfish for Magic Light Pictures and premiered on BBC last Christmas to five-star reviews and has since been named Best Animation at Shanghai International TV Festival and taken home the Audience Award for ages 3-6 at New York International Children’s Film Festival. 

Zog is the keenest but clumsiest pupil in his class at Dragon School, where he longs to win a gold star as he learns how to fly, roar and breathe fire. He keeps meeting a kindly young girl, who patches up his bumps and bruises, but can she help him with his trickiest school assignment yet: capturing a princess? 

The perfect family film for Women’s Month, Zog is based on Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s much loved 2010 picture book, which has sold over 1.5 million copies, won the Galaxy National Children’s Book of the Year Award in the UK, and cracked BookTrust’s list of ‘10 Of The Best Feminist Books For Children.’

Zog placed fifth on the UK’s viewing chart this festive season, with only 200 000 fewer viewers than the Queen’s Christmas broadcast. The Telegraphpraised the short as a “hypnotising, inspiring tale for all the family”; Den of Geek called it “a thing of perfectly spherical loveliness; it is lovely from every conceivable angle”; The Guardian warned parents “once this has been added to iPlayer you may never be allowed to watch anything else again on your TV – ever!”; and Donaldson told The Herald that Zog was her favourite BBC adaptation to date. 

Zog is the fourth in a string of BBC Christmas adaptations from Triggerfish and Magic Light, following the multi-award-winning Donaldson-Scheffler adaptations Stick Man (2015) and The Highway Rat (2017) as well as the Oscar-nominated Roald Dahl adaptation Revolting Rhymes (2016). 

If anything watch this one out of enjoyment (with your fam) or alone as a way to tap into your childhood. It looks silly but cute and innocent…the perfect way to escape for a bit we figure, watch Zog first and only on Showmax in Africa.

The website features 25 free video tutorials, quizzes and animation exercises introducing animation as a career and the principles of storytelling, storyboarding and animation, as well as several additional resources to help guide aspiring animators into a career in animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUdj2XYL0Ek&feature=youtu.be

Njangiru also highlighted the opportunities for animation outside the traditional film industry, within fields like advertising, app and web design, architecture, engineering, gaming, industrial design, medicine, and the motor industry, not to mention growth sectors like augmented reality and virtual reality. 

The course was created by Tim Argall, currently the animation director on Triggerfish’s third feature film, Seal Team. He’s roped in many of the South African animation industry’s brightest stars, from Malcolm Wope, character designer on Mama K’s Team 4, and Annike Pienaar, now working at Illumination in Paris on Sing 2, to Daniel Snaddon, co-director of the multi-award-winning BBC adaptations Stick Man and Zog, and Faghrie Coenraad, lead dressing and finaling artist on the Oscar-nominated Revolting Rhymes, as well as Triggerfish head of production Mike Buckland. The featured talent share not just their skills but also their stories, from how they broke the news they wanted to be animators to their parents, to common myths about the animation industry.

Triggerfish Academy is his attempt to make it easier for the next generation of African animators: an accessible starter kit for anyone considering a career in animation.

Aspiring animators can also use Triggerfish Academy to learn how to write and animate their own short story, then post their animation on the Academy’s Facebook group for feedback and advice from professional animators.

Triggerfish Academy is set up so that youth can play with it directly, but it’s also been designed to double as an activity plan for teachers, NGOs and after school programmes to use. Schools, organisations and other animation studios who are interested in using it can contact Triggerfish for additional free classroom resources.