Today, we host Williams Etombi, aka Willy Kanga, on The Big Showcase. Willy Kanga is an animator, an architect, a skit maker and the founder of Willy Kanga Face, a merch brand. Willy Kanga has been into art since he was 12. He took that interest further when he started sketching charcoal pencil artworks, and in the first year of his postgraduate programme, he moved to animation.

For Willy Kanga, switching to animation was best because he could merge his architectural and design principles with his traditional art talent. His animation style, which uses lines with minimal details in sight, is called minimalism. Willy Kanga has worked with several brands, including those in the automobile, cryptocurrency, and logistics sectors.

With a growing audience of 140 thousand followers on Instagram and more on TikTok, Willy Kanga has cracked the social media content creation game. In this showcase, he shares not only his animation career journey but also his social media growth strategies.

Who Exactly is Willy Kanga?

We know Willy Kanga the animator and funny guy, but who is he when the camera is off? Willy Kanga shares some common misconceptions that most people have about him.

“I don’t take in negative energy, so I hardly notice misconceptions. However, one misconception people have about me is that I’m snobbish because I don’t reply to messages on time. They think I’m ignoring them, but I’m not. It’s just that they don’t understand the sacrifices that come with being a social media influencer. Not only that but also the fact that I’m not just any influencer but an animation influencer. Animation takes time, so I’m usually on my laptop. And when I’m working, I shun everything else until I finish that particular animation project.”

Influencers and celebrities keep their lives and real personalities off the gram for different reasons. Willy Kanga shares another misconception that many would argue is true.  

“Another misconception is that I smoke or take hard substances because of how I portray my cartoon characters. But I’ve never smoked weed in my life. While I know and draw my cartoon inspiration from people who smoke, I’ve never wanted to do the same.”

Willy Kanga is quite an interesting person, and he admits that only a few people genuinely know him because he does the opposite of who people think he is.

“As an ambivert and someone who started with skit making, I make it my focal point to mostly present to my audience the opposite of my dominant personalities just to draw them in. I’ve also discovered that many content creators act ‘mad’ and extroversive online, but are very different offline, so I know I’m not alone in that category.”

Standing Out With a New Brand of Animation

To elaborate on his mention of skit making, Willy Kanga shares a part of his content creation journey and why he decided to start skit animation.

“I started with skit making about five years ago and picked up skit animation three years ago. It felt like something clicked once I started making animated skits. I couldn’t drop it because it made more sense than ordinary skit-making. Before I even started making skits, I was a traditional artist who could sketch and paint. As such, skit animation was the sweet point between traditional art and skit-making. I was happy to have the best of both worlds. Additionally, I wanted to do something different from other skit makers, and skit animation felt rare because nobody else was doing it in Nigeria when I started. And that became my brand’s unique selling point. Since my first animated skit, which got up to 60,000 views on Tik Tok, I’ve always had high engagement on my pages.”

Willy Kanga continues with why he chose animation over skit-making and traditional art.

“I chose animation over skit making and traditional art because it’s a unique skill that allows for originality. As a skit animator, I’m both a content creator and a conventional artist. For me, that still qualifies as creating art. At a point in my skit-making career, I also noticed that the skit-making space was overcrowded and didn’t give much room for people to shine properly. But in the animation space, it’s not easy to steal another person’s animated work.“

Every creative has subject matters they choose to focus on, and Willy Kanga shares a few of the themes he spotlights with his work.

“Most of my work is focused on politics as my way of creating awareness about political injustices and ways of improving living standards in Nigeria. Another common theme in my work is dark humour, another unique lead magnet for my brand.”

Willy Kanga, the Minister of ‘Vawulence’

Content creation on social media can be tricky, especially when you consider the role algorithms play in putting you before your audience. Willy Kanga shares why he isn’t concerned that his dark-humoured animated skits would backfire.

“Only about one percent of your online followers deliberately seek out your content, and your content is automatically visible to only a fraction of that percentage. The rest need a boost to view and engage with your content. So a major objective that my dark humour posts achieve is to get people to engage with the posts – good or bad, and to trick the social media algorithm into seeing such posts as highly interesting. That way, I’m able to reach my audience more.”

If you’re familiar with internet slang, especially among the Nigerian Twitter audience, you’d have heard or used the term ‘vawulence’, meaning violence. Although laidback offline, Willy Kanga is the vawulence king online.

“Another way I trick the algorithm is by starting controversial conversations with my animations just to get the algorithm to direct people to engage with my posts. For example, I love both Ronaldo and Messi. In fact, I love Rolando more than Messi, but I make posts that bash Ronaldo because it will cause ‘vawulence’. Lol.”