New Studio Draws on Cultural Diversity

Glendale-based Hyperion Studio and animator-director Bruce Smith’s newly formed Jambalaya Studio, LLC, hopes to bring something new to animation: diversity.

Smith, Jambalaya’s majority stockholder, says the studio will work on a broad spectrum of multicultural animation projects.

“I’ve always wanted to do projects that experimented in terms of ethnic makeup, and the purpose of this studio is to bring other identities to the forefront,” explains Smith. “Once you start to put different faces on the screen, it constitutes a fresh approach, but that’s just the surface: The cool part of it is what’s going to be underneath it all.” Smith’s recent work includes co-direction of the animation in Warner Bros.’ “Space Jam” and the animation of Kerchak, the leader of the gorilla tribe in Disney’s “Tarzan;” Hyperion is the producer of the “Brave Little Toaster” direct-to-video series and the Emmy- and Humanitas-winning “Life With Louie.”

“Our emphasis will initially be television, Internet-related and direct-to-video projects simply because those are areas which are always looking for material,” says Hyperion President Tom Wilhite. “The animation business, particularly the television animation business, is about finding properties that catch viewers’ attention. The African American, Latino and Asian American cultures offer imagery and sensibilities that can do that--both in traditional network prime time and in cable and pay TV.

“Because features involve higher costs and a lengthier process, we’ll deal with them on a project-by-project basis. We have a couple of things that we’re investigating, which I think are perfect feature projects.”

The two men have worked together before; Smith directed the first season of Hyperion’s “Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child” (HBO). Wilhite co-produced and Smith directed “Bebe’s Kids” (1992), the only American animated feature to focus on African American characters. Released by Paramount, the film grossed only $7.5 million, which raised questions about the potential market for ethnic animated properties. But with the increasing crossover popularity of rap and hip-hop, Wilhite thinks it would be a different story today.

Marketing Changes in Crossover Projects

“When ‘Bebe’s Kids’ came out, it was marketed specifically to a black audience, and it did well in a fairly limited number of theaters in mostly black neighborhoods,” Wilhite says. “Today, the industry sees the breadth of the audience. If Paramount released ‘Bebe’s Kids’ today, it would be marketed in a whole different way than it was eight years ago.”

Adds Smith: “I understand crossover appeal, and Tom understands marketing, so there’s no question that this material is going to play to a large audience. We’re not trying to target a specific race; our projects are general entertainment but from a cultural point of view that hasn’t really been pushed in the mainstream.”

Jambalaya’s focus on ethnic characters bucks the long and often embarrassing history of racial imagery in American cartoons. During the ‘30s and ‘40s, animators borrowed unflattering stereotypes from vaudeville, live-action films and comic strips. MGM’s “Bosko,” George Pal’s “Jasper” and Walter Lantz’s “Li’l Eightball” series all focused on mischievous black children. Mindful of that painful legacy, some animators fear their work will be perceived as racist if they draw characters with identifiable racial characteristics.

“For me, drawing black people is something that rolls off my hand, something I’m used to doing,” says Smith. “I wouldn’t necessarily focus on the features that people would call stereotypical, because when I draw these characters, I draw them from the soul. A character may have all the stereotypical elements that drive people nuts, but you can read exactly who the person is, which makes the drawing funny as opposed to racist.”

The first two projects for Jambalaya are https://www.FunkyMango.com, a Web site that will present animation and mixed-media works by emerging minority artists, and a planned half-hour TV series, “The Proud Family.” The FunkyMango site is under construction, and the partners expect to have it up and running by the end of October. “With the Internet and some of the new shows, the audience--particularly the younger audience--is completely open to almost anything in terms of visual execution,” says Wilhite. “They respond to the content and writing. I think the great thing about the animation business now is that it’s a much broader, much freer-form arena than it was when we started this company 15 years ago.”

“We’re not going to be doing just traditional animation,” adds Smith. “Visually, we’re going to be doing stuff that’s very cutting-edge: some computer animation, some cutout animation. But this visual potpourri will deal with a whole different identity.”

Smith began developing the idea for “The Proud Family” two years ago, drawing on his own experiences growing up in a middle-class African American family in Los Angeles. He wanted to create “a middle-class family that was not so much Cosby-esque as Cosby-esque with a really interesting slant.” Wilhite says the studio “is in advanced negotiations to produce multiple episodes of ‘The Proud Family’ for one of the major cable companies.”

“When I look at different television genres, African Americans and Latinos and such were sort of eliminated from them, whether you think of the past or the future--’The Flintstones’ or ‘The Jetsons,’ ” Smith says.

“I want to take these genres, re-create what’s already there, spin it and add us to the mix. ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Rugrats’ are ensemble family pieces; I wanted to do an ensemble family piece that I could truly relate to. Growing up in L.A. in a family of six kids, we had some crazy episodes, and I thought it would be a cool idea to bring all that stuff to the screen. I wouldn’t say it’s edgy the way ‘South Park’ is edgy--it’s edgy but it has a heart.”

“The Proud Family,” he adds, “speaks a language that hasn’t been heard on television--a very safe language but one that hasn’t been heard.”