[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
The recent explosion of hip underground animation on the web has opened the doors to a new breed of animator. One major growth area is animation produced by black directors, and a lot of it is coming from State-side company Urban Entertainment, founded in 1999 by lawyer and Hollywood executive, Michael Jenkinson. The company was initially launched to develop black live-action feature films traditionally ignored by mainstream distribution outlets, but has recently concentrated on animation, drawing on established talent from the film and TV industries who relish the freedom urbanentertainment.com offers from network TV's restrictions on subject matter and language.
When Jenkinson started looking for net-friendly Flash animated content, he says it was 'a natural progression based on the state of technology ... what could really play well on the net'. Animation is quicker to download than live action, and for the same reasons plays best in short snippets, so he was naturally drawn to animated shorts and mini-series. Since his first exploration into web animation Jenkinson has become 'quite a fanatic'.
Also frustrated at the difficulty of getting network TV to make 'quirky black shows', long-established film and TV writer/producer Tina Andrews has created Sistas 'N The City for Urban Entertainment. 'I'd say, "Where's black Sex in the City?" I wanted something funny ... sort of bad, wry ... raunchy on occasion, and something educational.' She too was an animation virgin, but is now a convert. 'The beauty of it is designing and creating those characters and seeing them exactly as you envisioned as opposed to going out and trying to cast someone to come up to that vision!'
Declaration of independence
While there is no similar outlet in the UK, Tony Johnson, whose mini-series Stonehouse Reunion about a bunch of ex-cons shows on the programme, has racked up an impressive credits list in his relatively short career. Based in Cardiff, graphic artist and filmmaker Johnson first worked creating titles for TV programmes.
He followed this with an ambitious animated mini-feature, Fallen Angels, in part inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost, reworked against a black urban American landscape, and in part by his earlier documentary, Winnebago Blues, about taking a group of young people across the USA.
Johnson has also designed and scripted a 90-minute animated feature, currently in pre-production. Fiercely independent, he is now making a German-funded special, Coffee, on his own.
Asked why there are so few visible black animators making their own films, he puts it down to the fact that many black people don't even consider going to art college - the usual route for animators. 'Animation just isn't on their radar - not like "proper jobs" with a well-defined career ladder.'
Tackling the issue of ethnicity and cultural identity is Maybelle Peters, another black UK animator. Her mixed-media student film, Black Skin White Masks, was followed by the cut-out animated A Lesson in History. Under the C4 MOMI scheme she then made Mama Lou, a stop-motion film set in the Caribbean about the secret basement club for women blues singers. She is currently creating digital artworks for the web.
Graffiti artist-turned animator Kyle Legal provides an animated recipe, one of the ingredients of the Toon Commandments charting the rules for graffiti animation.
To some the term 'blaxploitation' recalls the drugs, crime and sex-heavy scenarios - read pimps, whores and dealers – in 70s feature films such as Shaft, which many protested perpetuated racial stereotyping. However, Bryon Carson, who directed the Undercover Brother series, feels that as a black filmmaker he can reclaim racial stereotypes and make them his own whilst still accurately portraying his own community.
From early attempts to make it as an actor, Carson has become animator supremo for a black generation. Among his other works is There Goes the Nation (about the first black American President who resides in the black house), and My Mama's Baby influenced by old barbershops in the neighbourhoods he lived.
| Graffiti Animation | |
| First Commandment. | Keep the can in your hand |
| Second Commandment. | Dowatchyalike |
| Third Commandment. | Thou shalt freestyle |
| Fourth Commandment. | Dirt is good |
| Fifth Commandment. | Love thy work |
Best of British | Sci-fi
| Japan | Blaxploitation
| Outrageous | Music
Access
advice
For web users with disabilities.
Graphic version
Includes layout and images.