Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1485933
14 KEYFRAME WHEN JABARI MET MEADOW The romantic comedy is tried-and-true. Certain tropes like meet-cute and misun- derstandings are hallowed ground. But that doesn't mean it's not possible to breathe new life into the genre. Case in point: Entergalactic. This adult animated story follows street artist Jabari and photographer Meadow, twenty-somethings living in New York City, as they, yes, meet-cute, and then navigate their feelings for one another. Creators and Executive Producers Kenya Barris and Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi both call Entergalactic a Black love story, but Maurice Williams, also an Executive Producer and the film's writer along with Ian Edelman, says that the storyline itself was not approached as such. The focus, he says, was on "that trepidatious period in the beginning of relationships where one false move and maybe the rest of your life could be over tomorrow. That's something we can all identify with." While it was important for the filmmakers to highlight the absence of love stories with Black characters onscreen, and to have the two leads be brown skinned without "any apologies or caveats … the idea was that there was never a flashlight on who these people were racially," Williams says. "Love is colorless. There is a yearning to see ourselves in that light, [but] it's not different. There is no creative difference. There is no inception difference. It really is about the idea of being able to execute something authentic." "Maurice wanted to write a very real, very relatable love story. Very grounded. Very now," says Director Fletcher Moules. One of the ways Moules approached this visually was to embrace imperfection because he believes this is an element of authenticity. "It's a rom-com, it should feel warm and loving, and I wanted to make sure that the artist's hand was on the screen the whole time," he says. He and his team used tools that projected brushstrokes so everything from the background to the highlights on a character's face looks hand painted. Pacing was also used to capture the human element of the story. "In a lot of my favorite INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF KID CUDI, ENTERGALACTIC EXPLORES THE UNIVERSALITY OF NEW LOVE. above and opposite: Attention to the small, personal details of daily life makes Jabari and Meadow's relationship relatable in universal ways. Maurice Williams CO-WRITER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Fletcher Moules DIRECTOR All images courtesy of Netflix, Inc. S T O R Y & V I S I O N