Students from Shymkent Aliya Tugelbai and Bakbergen Saparov were recognised among participants from 35 countries during the recent 18th To Save and To Reserve International Ecological Festival in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia for animated cartoons they created to help save the endangered saiga antelope.
Tugelbai’s 3.5-minute “A White Saiga”and Saparov’s 2.5-minute “A Lame Saiga” animations both took one year to create. According to the young animators, the most challenging part of the project was to depict the characters in motion as each second of animation requires five to seven images.
The animators also took second place at the First National Festival of Children’s Art and presented animated cartoons at the 17th International Festival of Animated Video Clips Animayevka 2014
The Alakai children’s animation studio where the two students learned to make animated videos was opened by the Centre of Childhood and Youth in Shymkent last year. The director of the studio, Maksut Zharimbetov hopes other children will be inspired by the students’ achievements and will also succeed in this type of art.
Tugelbai and Saparov have already begun work on other stories related to ecological issues. Tugelbai wants to address the problem of swallow extinction and Saparov has been inspired by the beautiful legend of the Kirik Kiz passover, located on the way to the Ugam gorge.
