The Next Batch: Rowland Olamide on the inspiration behind Batch's first community project and collaborating with Tendril
Rowland Olamide, founder and creative director of Batch, talks about how the collaboration with Tendril came about, the inspiration behind 'The Next Batch' film and the process of bringing it to life
In October, Batch, a community of young motion designers from all across Africa, released a film introducing its community, marking an exciting new chapter in its story.
The film, which was made in collaboration with Tendril, a leading studio based in Toronto, is the community’s first collaborative project.
The project titled ‘The Next Batch,’ which had over 20 collaborators, debuted at Batch Meet 1.0, the community’s first event. “This film captures the essence of who we are at Batch—a community driven by a passion for animation, visual storytelling, and growth,” it noted.
“By inviting every collaborator to design their own version of the Portal, we celebrate the diversity within the team while highlighting our collective commitment to shared goals.”
Batch, founded in 2022 by Rowland Olamide, a freelance art director & motion designer, is a community of motion designers united by a shared passion for animation and visual storytelling. According to Rowland, Batch represents motion designers from underrepresented areas around the world like Africa, Asia even Australia. “We are the next batch of amazing motion designers,” he wrote in 2022.
In a conversation with The Creatives Note, Rowland Olamide, founder of Batch and creative director for the project, talks about the inspiration behind the project, how the collaboration with Tendril came about, and the process of bringing the film to life.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the collaboration with Tendril happen?
I texted Chris [Bahry], who is the co-founder of Tendril, a couple of weeks ago if it was possible for him to sponsor an event I wanted to host for Batch, and he was like, yes, he will. Chris, who has been a really good friend and a mentor of sorts, has always been supportive of everything I do in the shadows, so I was super excited about getting that ‘Yes’. After he said yes, we had a brief call.
On the call, he talked about me branding the event and creating a project that encapsulates what Batch is about. It was supposed to be a branding project but also a motion project, and it was supposed to be an exploration I would work on personally. But I was like, ‘It would be cool if it was not just me but a community thing and it would be cool if we had creative direction from Tendril as well,’ and he loved the idea of having them creatively direct the project. So he assigned a creative director from Tendril for the project.
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Leo Mateus, the creative director who was assigned to the project, is someone I have worked with in the past. I worked with him on a pitch last year, and from my experience on that project, I knew that he was the perfect person to work with for the project, because, unlike a lot of people I have worked with, he cared about what I had to bring to the table and listened to my ideas.
So for the next couple of weeks, Leo and I met to discuss the project and pre-plan it together. While I was going to creatively direct the project, he was coming in to serve as a creative mentor.
For this phase, we were able to plan out the project. We planned how to make it collaborative because a big part of what I wanted the project to be was to make sure everyone in the Batch community, who would be interested in contributing to the project, would be able to be a part of it. I didn’t want to make it something that would be just me and a few people that I liked because I have been in spaces that are very closed off and I didn’t want that for this project.
Interesting!!! According to the project credit, over 20 people contributed to the project. How did you make that happen?
The first thing we did was to create a Google form which we shared within the community for people who would like to be a part of the project to signify. (Let me give a shout-out to Ayomide, the project manager. She was a big part of planning and making it happen.)
After that, we created a brief that we shared with everyone. And for the next couple of weeks, we had a meeting every week with the community where everyone got to share their ideas and what they were working on. At this point, we were doing design explorations. Everyone had a chance to design a frame and express an idea. (You will find everyone's design explorations in the case study). My job as the creative director was to take everyone’s ideas and create a cohesive film.
Alongside Leo, we had an art director, Murilo [Martarello], who worked on the final design, and Juliana [Custódio] and Luan [Rossi dos Santos] from Tendril who worked on the final animation.
We also had another executive creative director, Branko [Jass], who made all this possible. He made sure the project came out as nicely as it did.
What was the creative brief and overall process like for the project?
One of the things Leo and I worked on early on was identifying the common pillars and keywords that would guide the ideas. The keywords described what we were trying to create.
One of the keywords I came up with was ‘Journey,’ because Batch is a journey, and it’s a big part of why Batch is called Batch. When I was thinking about the name Batch at the time, I thought about how we are the next batch of amazing motion designers from the continent. While we may not necessarily be where we want to be in our careers, we are on a journey.
Another keyword was ‘Aspiration’. The project was going to be aspirational such that when you see it you are inspired. ‘Excitement’ and ‘Transformation’ are other keywords that guided the project.
Some common pillars that we came up with were “colourful, morph, portals, texture, levitate.” These keywords and pillars guided the process and you will find elements of them across the film.
In terms of the style of the project, I wanted to make sure that everybody, no matter their style (2D or 3D), could contribute to the project. I wanted a series of portals and my favourite portal is the 2D portal that was made by Titi. She drew and painted every single frame.
During this phase of the project, the contributors generated a lot of ideas and it was my job to bring everything together. I made the executive call on what stayed and what had to go. With help from Murilo and Juliana, we took all the frames and ideas and made them into a story, with the story morphing and evolving along the line.
What has the reception and response to the project been like?
Honestly, I knew it was going to come out amazingly but I don’t think I was prepared for the feeling that would come with it. I wasn’t mentally prepared for how exciting it would feel.
The feedback has been positive. A lot of people love it.
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How did the community’s first-ever event go?
The event, which happened on October 5th, had over 40 people in attendance and we first previewed the film at the event. (Shout out to Ayomide, David and Sonia who helped with planning the event.)
The idea for the event, which was inspired by the Lagos Meet’s Dribbble event in 2018, was to create a comfortable space where everybody could bond and interact physically. And we were able to achieve that with the support of Tendril.
One of the things we did at the event was to make the portal scenes into an activity for the event. We made everyone at the event paint their own portal.
