Emmanuel Joseph Ndem

Adaptation of Nsibidi Symbols to Humanoid Character in Animation Emmanuel Joseph Ndem

Promoting African culture through animation is a major step in influencing today's society on the need to place value on African indigenous symbols. On the contrary, African animators are adopting western symbols in creating character-animation, ignoring the communicative and aesthetic qualities that reside in African symbols when used for the same purpose. This idea by animators especially in Africa is as a result of the impression that most of these African Symbols can only be used as images of idol worship, fetishes and shrine objects rather than in ordinary daily communication. The study in this book was undertaken to preserve visually the symbols of nsibidi using Animation. The main objective was to create Humanoid character for animation using nsibidi symbols. The focus was on the reproduction of an Ibibio/African folklore entitled "the Dancing Palm Tree".