On November 14, 2018, Cartoon Network Africa announced 26-year-old Nigerian, Ridwan Moshood as the winner of its maiden edition of Creative Lab, an African creative animation competition.
Here are five things you need to know about Ridwan, an exciting young creative with a truly promising future.
- Ridwan Shades Moshood is a 26-year-old Nigerian animator, illustrator and content creator. He is also the founder of Toon up Animation. He is a self-taught animator, who learned how to animate and illustrate by watching Youtube videos.
- His parents bought him his first laptop after they saw his interest in drawing and illustration.
- He is the creator of Garbage Boy and Trash Can. The project, which won Cartoon Network Africa’s Creative Lab in 2018, follows Garbage Boy, a self-proclaimed superhero who believes he has real superpowers, along with his sidekick, Trash Can, on their mission to fight for justice.
- Ridwan Moshood actually would never have submitted an entry for the Cartoon Network competition, but when he entered for the Annecy Mefer Pitch, one of the judges Nick Wilson commended his work. That was what motivated him to enter the competition which he later won.
- The animation was inspired by a personal bullying experience in which a trash bag was dumped on his head by seniors in secondary school, and got him the nickname Trashboy. He then decided to create something good out of the unfortunate experience by coining the character name “Garbage Boy”, thus creating a symbol of hope for children who are victims of bullying.