Honoré Essoh comes from the world of media, specifically radio in Ivory Coast and Senegal. He has been working in audiovisual production for around ten years. He began his career in 2009, collaborating with the Afrikatoon animation studio. During this time, he wrote the scripts for the studio's first two feature films. In 2014, he decided to start his own animation production company, Studio 6.
Can you tell us about what you do?
Studio 6 is based in Abidjan, in Yopougon. I chose this neighborhood on purpose because it's where I got my start. I am very passionate about education and wanted to work with young people from the very beginning. Committed since its creation to education through entertainment, Studio 6 produces content for television, cinema, and also institutional content.
What are your main achievements?
In 2016, I took part in a program in the United States that enabled me to obtain a grant to provide training in animation for young people. This enabled us to introduce around fifteen young people with experience in drawing to the basics of our profession over a period of three months. In particular, it enabled us to identify certain talents.
We integrated them into a team to work on a short live-action series project, "Le Génie," a comedy sketch show broadcast on A+ and Télésud.
Following this first project, we worked on a feature film project, "Génération décalée," initially produced for television in co-production with TSK Studio. We decided to develop this project based on the Nigerian model to try to stimulate the creation of local content and to make films in a very short time and with very limited resources. We screened the film at the Majestic cinema. It was the first Ivorian film to be screened in a cinema, but unfortunately it didn't work out. Still, it was a good experience.
In 2016, we developed our own animation project, a series of 13 five-minute episodes called "Nubu et Yara," which aired on TV5Monde and Gulli Africa and was distributed by TRACE Content Distribution. It was designed as a series of 13 five-minute episodes.
We then embarked on another more complex project, "Bouyou," an educational animated series of 26 7-minute episodes produced at the end of 2018 and broadcast in 2019 on TV5 Monde. We also adapted Nuru and Yara into a short film for the latest edition of FESPACO, which awarded prizes in the "animation" category for the first time. ."
What does the animation sector represent today in sub-Saharan Africa?
I chose to get into animation because I am the father of a little girl. I saw her watching certain animated films that bothered me a little. The content did not represent local realities. It was from this observation that I realized there was a real lack of animated content.
We are happy to do our job, but we are also very realistic about the situation. Our young people are not sufficiently trained, and this is reflected in our productions when compared to projects from countries such as South Africa, Madagascar, and Tunisia. What difficulties do you encounter on a daily basis?
Training is the first difficulty. There are very few animation courses in Côte d'Ivoire. This makes it difficult to compete with countries such as South Africa, Tunisia, and Ghana, which have a number of schools specializing in animation. To build and develop the industry as effectively as possible, we need to develop training. To develop animation, we need to train more talent to develop more projects. This is how we can professionalize the sector.
Beyond the lack of training, financing is also an obstacle. I embarked on this adventure knowing that, without subsidies, it would not be profitable or sustainable in the long term. To compensate, we also produce institutional films. Screenwriting also allows us to finance our projects. The presence of channels such as Gulli Africa and TV5Monde, which buy our productions, is also beneficial, unlike what local channels offer us.
For the moment, all our projects are designed at the same production level, but we need to evolve. We are trying to raise money through institutional films so that we can finance more training and production.
One of our upcoming projects is called "Nimba." It's a series that has earned us a development grant from a fund dedicated to young French-speaking creators. This grant allows us to develop the project in co-production with Europe, enabling a transfer of skills between our teams for a higher-quality project.
Also, the few funds that do exist are mainly focused on production. This is a shame because, in my opinion, these funds should also target training and cover other issues in the sector. Otherwise, we remain in a vicious circle: training is needed at all levels of the profession.
Read also: Interview with Abel Kouamé, founder of Afrikatoon