Kenyan “Avatar” woman has Special Effect at home

Meet the Kenyan painter who helped bring James Cameron’s “Avatar” to life

In a crowded room at the Serena Hotel, people were exchanging business cards, cameras were flashing and everyone wanted to speak to the woman in the peach blouse.

And no wonder. Yvonne Muinde is the Kenyan painter who helped bring James Cameron’s “Avatar” to life. To the animators, artists and graphic designers who came to hear her at the Serena in January, she is a role model at the top of the visual effects game.

Muinde, 36, is head of matte painting at Weta Digital in New Zealand. Her team won the 2010 Visual Effects Society award for outstanding matte paintings in a feature picture for “Avatar”, and she has also worked on films like “Happy Feet” and “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith”. But she still thinks of her work on films as a day job that pays for her painting.

Muinde, who left Nairobi aged 18 to study, said she was excited about Kenya’s potential but warned against trying to do too much too soon.

“I think ‘Avatar’ is an inspiration to everybody but we need to set realistic goals,” she said. “We haven’t invested in this for the last 20 years. We’re starting today to try to catch up with everybody else.”

At the Serena, Information Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo said the government had created a task force to look at using local talent to boost the visual effects industry and to examine the links between IT, animation, music and film.

Alex Gakuru, head of the ICT Consumers Association and a member of task force, described the Serena meeting as “refreshingly different.”

“The interesting thing was how everyone was trying to explore collaboration. I think Yvonne inspired people … She gave us a roadmap … She more or less set up the framework for the task force,” he said. “We are going to consolidate the segmented bits related to visual effects: animation, music, movie production, gaming and graphics,” he said.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do everything we have wished for. It has given hope to a lot of young animators and filmmakers. They see it as an opportunity and they are grabbing it and running with it.”