Kaleidoscope Promo

I'm now a weekly member of CNBC AFRICA's business magazine show, 'Kaleidoscope'. Mandlakazi Mpahlwa draws information out of our guests. And in my position as the show's resident visual facilitator, I draw that info live on screen on my Asus R1E tablet pc.

I wrote this promo for the show when Catherine Gargan, my senior producer at CNBC AFRICA, confirmed that we'd be going ahead.

I had already secured a sponsorship deal with Rectron. They agreed to supply an Asus R1E tablet pc for me to use on the show.

However, when our shoot date arrived, there was no stock of the machine in the country. So I had to use my trusty old Toshiba Tecra M4 as the star of the show.

(The animation of me and Mandla at the end was created by me in CrazyTalk 5. I made three drawings -- a pic of me, a pic of Mandla, and the backdrop. I saved the two portraits as PNG files, with no background. Pulled each one separately into CrazyTalk. Gave each one a green-screen background. Pulled a recording of the voicefile in, animated the pic, exported as an AVI. Did that for each pic. Andre, the editor, then pulled those separate files into Final Cut Pro, where he removed the green screen background, and composited both individual animations into the same video frame, with the painted background behind. All that for 3 seconds on screen. Cool, huh?)

Thanks to Catherine Gargan for producing and directing, Bathabile Modutoane for camera, everyone in studio for getting the feed right, and Andre Oosthuizen for editing.

All paintings I make for the show will be made on my Rectron-sponsored Asus R1E tablet pc, running ArtRage 2.5. The show airs via satellite on Saturday nights, 7:30pm to 8:00pm (Central African TIme, or GMT +2 hours), on CNBC AFRICA. That's channel 410 on DStv.