Storytelling uses a plethora of mediums, and animation is one of them.

During the 2023 AFROTECH™ Conference, director and animator Chaz Bottoms and singer Dawn Richard led a session called “World Builders: The New Storytelling Frontier” to discuss how the technologies within the animation industry are creating revolutionary ways for people to tell stories.

In their respective career journeys, Bottoms founded CBA Studios — one of the few Black-founded animation studios globally — and has worked with companies such as Disney, Hulu, and Adult Swim, per Forbes. Aside from Richard’s music career, she has a passion for animation. She created a comic book series called “Danity Kane” and works with Adult Swim as a creative consultant, as AFROTECH™ previously reported, to amplify and create opportunities for Black animators in the space.

“We are a beautiful people to draw, but we are a difficult people to draw in the sense that for people who aren’t us, they don’t know what they’re doing,” said Richard during the session.

Bottoms and Richard spoke about how beneficial the growth of technology has been, especially in drawing and animating Black people, for example, in terms of Black hair texture.

“Technology has been super helpful in that,” Bottoms added. “A lot of animation now is created with 2D puppet rigs… that was super helpful with hair because basically once you design the hair once and then rigged it up so it can move accurately, then it’s just a matter of making sure that the reference is honest and that it’s moving in the way that is realistic and authentic.” 

Bottoms also took a moment during the session to touch on how he doesn’t believe that AI’s impact will affect animators’ jobs.

“No matter what with AI-generated [projects], you’re still gonna need to bring a human touch or soul into it. I also don’t think that’s a particularly enjoyable way of creating art — typing something in and then, a computer spits out something that’s kind of an amalgamation of different artwork,” Bottoms said. “I think the actual key is making software more accessible and understandable. There’s a ton of amazing low-cost 3D software that are out there with huge communities of very passionate artists who want to create and want to work with other human beings to create that art.”

The session also shed light on how animation isn’t exclusive to those who are directly in the industry and can be helpful for venture capitalists.

“If you’re a VC, if you’re a startup company, and you’re looking for innovative ways to brand, animation is the tool to do it because it makes you live in a world where you have no walls conceptually,” Richard said. “There are no bounds.”

Looking at the future of animation, Richard envisions gamification becoming more of a trend.

“My vision is the future of animation is in the gamification of animation… I also think the blockchain, how animators are putting smart contracts and doing their ownership through the blockchain, is something that will happen,” Richard said. “I also think the biggest one is real-time rendering.”