Anzel van Zyl is a 22-year-old storyteller based in South Africa, specialising in 2D and stop-motion animation. Anzel’s solo approach to animation throughout her studies has earned her the title ‘jack-of-all-trades’, yet she is eager to start working alongside others. She graduated top of her class with a Bachelor of Design (Audio Visual) and is pursuing her Honours in 2024.
Anzel’s creative journey started at seventeen when she found a way to express herself and her identity struggles through music. She taught herself to play guitar and began writing songs as Ash Prince. This passion evolved, leading to the establishment of her brand, From Ashes, where she kept experimenting with different mediums for her stories.
After Anzel’s first animation in college, she despised the final outcome so much that she swore she’d rather brave a dragon’s lair than try animation again. Yet, another project came by, and Anzel decided to create a stop-motion animation … solo… without a budget. This animation was called ‘Dear Billy’, inspired by Stranger Things.
‘Dear Billy’ and ‘Banyu: The Water Spirit’ (her second-year final film) was the turning point for Anzel. These projects made her fall in love with the complex process of creating stop motion and frame-by-frame animation.
Although, it was the ‘Whispers of Meaning’ campaign that stood out amongst all her projects. By studying visual storytelling methods employed in Vox Machina, Arcane and the Spiderverse films, she constructed the campaign, including the trailer for ‘The Legend of Aegis’, an art book analysing the visual storytelling methods employed (extracted from the case studies) and a marketing campaign. The campaign framed these techniques and the art of balancing exposition in an easy-to-understand and accessible manner to empower novice storytellers.
Even though Anzel is still to enter the animation industry as a professional and not as a student, she has already gained invaluable experience and made waves with her projects. ‘Dear Billy’ won an award for best tradigital student project at the Cape Town International Animation Festival and has been selected alongside ‘The Legend of Aegis’ trailer to be screened at First Time Filmmakers and Lift-off Filmmaker Sessions in the category ‘Students of Storytelling’. Anzel has also been shortlisted to participate in the Queer Catalyst hosted by Fak’ugesi and Gala in 2024, where she will create a brand-new production that will form part of the African Digital Innovation Festival. Furthermore, she interned at Studio Zoo and MotionWorx in 2023. She currently (2024) works as a workshop facilitator for high school students as a stop-motion lecturer, dipping her toes into the world of Instructional Design.

In just over 2 years of animating, Anzel’s passion and determination have propelled her forward in South Africa’s competitive industry, and she shows no signs of slowing down. She hopes to enter the industry in 2025 as a storyboard artist or visual developer and work her way back to the director’s title…this time with a team of like-minded individuals by her side.