Kawia's Adventure

Eager to learn more about the creative minds behind Kawia's Adventure? Lydia Mugure and Tabitha Karaba sit down to share with us a little about themselves, their backgrounds, and what led them to where they are now.

Learning how to respect the relationship we have with our art, as pointed out by one of our mentors, Mr David OReilly. Treating it as a real relationship and making sure it grows, so we don't burn out and grow to hate making cool stuff or just stuff in general as time goes on. We feel like that's a super important thing we had never even considered till it was pointed out to us.

If we neglect treating what we love well, we could actually grow to hate it, and nope, we definitely do not want that!!!

In order to establish a better relationship with our craft we have resolved to try a makeshift situation where we try and date a hypothetical representation of our art (see image here above). We've named them coffee baby. We are looking to develop healthy relationship habits like spending just enough time together, listening when one is genuinely tired and doesn't want to hang out and helping each other grow. We hope we can treat them well so that they do not dump us, and that they treat us right as well. We shall maintain the good state of this teddy and make sure no harm comes to them. They are also now our team mascot because Tabi's cat said no to taking on that role.

Let's talk about Week 3! Learnings and discoveries from this week's mentorships.

Music on the mind - team Kawia's goal for this week:

Finding suitable music for the animation! That's really important to us as we are really banking on creating a huge connection with our audience through it, especially since our animation is centered around dance. 

We're at the beginning of an exciting adventure, so to kick things off, we asked the teams for their gut-reactions to the following questions. Their thoughtful responses provide awesome insight into their personalities :)

1. What are you hoping to get from this mentorship?

We are hoping, out of the mentorship programme, to be able to match our skill level to the industry standards given that we have such awesome mentors who are successful in their fields guiding us.

Also, we are really looking forward to building our confidence levels in the process through all the e-interaction, we are having.

2. What do you think you'll struggle with the most?

Our biggest struggle would have to be managing our anxiety as this is such a huge platform we've been offered a chance to grow in, full of such amazing people, and we definitely want to do everyone proud as we share Kawia the best way we know how.

3. What do you think you'll enjoy the most?

Our favourite part of this entire process is definitely meeting our idols who we get the chance to be mentored by. That by itself is just mind-freaking-blowing. And the cherry on that cake would have to be making buddies who are in the same industry as us a part of our new tribe!

4. What do you think will be the most surprising/unexpected part of this experience?

We feel as if there's no way to be more surprised than how we are at the moment, that we are actually doing this right now. We are still trying to collect our brains from being blown away as much as they are 😂. However, we are definitely looking forward to when we will show what we're working on come March. We really can't wait to see the entire project come to fruition.

What better way to introduce the finalists to the Tribe than through a special edition of Kanpai! Our very own Shuzo sat down with Lydia (and Tabi, in wifi-deadzone spirit) to chat about all things Kawia's Adventure ;)

Watch to see highlights and get inspired!

The journey began back in July 2020, with Sony and THU's invitation to connect, collaborate and contribute. The result is the incredible adventure we're currently embarked on. But it all began here: with a pitch and a dream.

Meet Lydia Mugure and Tabitha Karaba and follow them as they welcome us into the world of Kawia's Adventure.

Statement

When crossing borders, this project will take us on a time-traveling safari across the African savannah to discover an ancient magical land lost to time, witness the lives and the history of a people lost to the sands of the Sahara sing with them, play with them, learn from them and listen to their stories echoing in the wind. The concept is basically a movie you play through using animation to capture the magic lost to time and video game mechanics to let people live out the stories themselves. You get to play as a Kawia a girl on a journey home and through this journey, we get to experience how life was in the old days; filled with music, dance, art, and cute elephants! In what is basically a cultural showcase of the East African community that literally takes you back in time to hang out with our ancestors and dance with them! why dance though? It's a well-known fact that Africans love to dance, we dance for everything! Someone just had a kid? time to dance! It's raining? time to dance! Hmmm...It hasn't rained for a while, we should summon an amazing storm...time to dance! oh no, someone died...time to dance, but like...in a sad way. So we choreographed the dances from each east African region from Rwanda to Ethiopia to use as a weaponized form of magic and expression while show casing our history! Now doesn't that sound like a fun time!

Tools Description

Blender, A free 3d and 2d animation tool used to develop models and animate them Unity incredibly powerful game development software