Almasi meets a magic butterfly who becomes her spirit guide to the wilderness. She demonstrates a way of being; to her everyone is a person, including trees, fish, and beetles, to whose needs we can pay attention. As humanity leaves our patrimony of privation and poverty behind, the next generations have the opportunity to grow up loving the wilderness, not fearing it. We now have the technology to develop in ways that support wild ecosystems to flourish alongside us. Almasi & her cousins start their adventures among the mangroves of Mida Creek because these represent the most crucial and delicate environments on Earth, as fish nurseries and preventing erosion.
We present an animation that is high-tech and labor intensive, in 52x10-minute episodes. Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving animation costs down around the world, but we are still at a lower price point than AI. Soft power – African animation has the power to preserve our culture and present our stories to children globally for years. We aim to transform development and conservation, to give animals the freedom of the land; to cause an interconnected network of wildlife conservation areas. Across Kenya, and one day across Africa. Multimedia University of Kenya has proven competence and the certainty of completion. Episodes 1 and 2 of Almasi are available online on YouTube in full. Completed entirely by the animation graduates in Nairobi. Our animation costs are $2,000 a minute compared to $4,000 in the Philippines, the world’s principal outsourcing destination for animation. Artists work within a profit-sharing model with long-term ownership of the show. Project is de risked by being housed at Multimedia University of Kenya, employing graduates. We have prepared more episodes and plan to secure additional funding for our teaching efforts.