“Eyes of Wakanda,” an animated spin-off from the “Black Panther” franchise, premiered its first episode at a panel at theAnnecy Animation Festival.
Director Todd Harris introduced the episode, titled “Into the Lion’s Den,”before a Q&A session on the morning of June 9. Harris, previously a story artist for Marvel on “Black Panther” and its sequel “Wakanda Forever,” said the show followed an “anthology adjacent” format.
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The episode, the first of four in the series, is set in 1260 B.C., and turns on a Wakandan secret agent, a disgraced former Dora Milaje named Noni (played by Winnie Harlow), as she pursues a man by the moniker of ‘Lion’ (Cress Williams).
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Lion has defected from the Wakandan guard in order to run a band of pirates, and has stolen technology from Wakanda in order to found his own kingdom. Noni finds him in Crete, where Lion’s crew of pirates, assembled from fighters from around the world, are currently pillaging and enslaving a town.
The show is animated in a graphic 3D style by Axis Animation studio, full of exaggerated character designs and 2D visual effects. The opening sequence, as Harris excitedly highlighted, is hand-drawn, by artists at AKA Studio. “There was a version of the show which had 2D montages,” Harris explains. But due to time constraints, this was kept to the opening, intended to preserve that spirit. It’s also a nod to the show’s visual roots, as Harris points out that charcoal drawings are the first stage of a painting.
The design, as Harris puts it, is meant to push cultural specifics and foreground the range of cultures the Wakandans have interacted with over time, while preserving the sci-fi look established in the film. He also primarily attributes the “painterly” look to illustrators and painters like Dean Cornwell as well as Ernie Barnes, the latter being an inspiration for the character’s exaggerated proportions.
The team also studied contemporary international art, working backwards from the present to find common themes that could be picked up and pointed to Wakandan influence over time as a country that has “been around for thousands of years, longer than anyone else.” Audience reaction to the first episode looked generally positive, with general questions highlighting the show’s feeling of cultural authenticity.
Following this adventure is a brief establishment of the overall premise of the show: “hop-scotching through centuries” in four self-contained stories following Wakandan agents as they retrieve different artefacts stolen from their nation. “It’s mostly a spy story,” Harris said, continuing to describe each of these episodes as a study in seeing the reaction of these agents to the real world, “balancing what they see with their nationalist agenda.”
Each of the 30-minute episodes will take place across different time periods, following different artefacts taken. But there is some continuity, as the impact of the Lion’s actions will apparently be felt across all of that time. Harris also teased some form of familiar Marvel characters making appearances: “There will be an Iron Fist in here, and not the Iron Fist you expect.”
There are other familiar touches, such as recollections of Ryan Coogler’s original ‘Black Panther’ in the dialogue and the visual design, but Harris notes that “it was never my goal to make ‘another one,’ my goal was to make something new.”
The team achieved this effectively by working backwards from the present, under the overall principle of “what’s the kind of culture that builds a Black Panther?” This was assisted by some input from the production design team who worked on the feature, as well as with input from exec producer Ryan Coogler.
Harris describes the fictional country, first depicted in Marvel Comics, as if “Star Trek got dropped in the middle of Africa, but was excited to explore the principles that keep such a nation preserved for as long as it has. “Eyes of Wakanda” intends to explore how the culture and tactics of Wakandans evolve as it introduces new characters in new time periods, but also the “stillness” which lies at its heart, as Wakanda seeks to remain isolated and resist “over-expansion.” “Stillness is a difficult thing, and Wakanda by definition has remained the same,” the director says. “Staying still against the current takes energy – so what are they willing to do to remain that way, to not over-expand?”
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