Anime is perhaps the most dominant form of genre entertainment in the world. There are countless films and shows to satisfy pretty much any nerdy palette, and fans of those shows deliver some of the most epic cosplays you’ll ever see. And, when it comes to dedication to a franchise, anime fans are unmatched. You truly have to be dedicated to watch over 1,100 episodes of One Piece! Among viewers of many series is a substantial amount of Black fans. We’ve gotten some epic Black anime characters over the years onscreen (and could use many more!). However, there are not as many opportunities for Black creatives to work behind the scenes to help craft these stories.
Animator Kennedy Freeman and her team at Luv Letter Studios, which she founded in 2023, aims to change that. After working for major studios like Titmouse, DreamWorks, and Disney, she wanted to create a place where minority creatives can break into the industry in an environment that is creatively challenging yet supportive. Luv Letter Studios is Black-owned and aims to create works that feel like a love letter to the craft of animation. The studio’s primary focus is on Eastern and Western 2D animation and provides expertise from preproduction to post with project management, script writing, storyboarding, visual development, and more.
Alongside Freeman is LaKira Porter, a voice actor and social media manager, and Jannah Manneh, a 2D animator and motion designer at Luv Letter. This trio along with others under this company’s umbrella have worked on titles like Lazarus, Dan Da Dan, and The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. We spoke with Freeman, Porter, and Manneh about their origins in the animation and acting space, why Luv Letter Studios is vital in anime, and much more.
Nerdist: How did you become an anime fan?
Kennedy Freeman: One of my friends wound up getting me into anime when I was in fifth grade. I remember she told me that she wanted me to watch Soul Eater. At first, I was like, “No, that show looks very weird.” It wasn’t really something that was appealing to me. But as I started watching another show called PreCure, it made me really appreciate the medium of animation. I wanted to know how the creators make their stylistic choices and how they go about storytelling. And so as I started delving more and more into it, I said, “Hey, I think this is the career that I want to do.”
Jannah Manneh: I feel like my origin story for animation is a little weird. I work in anime, but anime isn’t what got me into wanting to animate. The movie that specifically made me want to be an animator was FernGully. When I was a little kid, once a week my siblings and I would get to watch a new movie together. And they would never let me pick one because I was the youngest. But when I finally did, I picked FernGully and it became my favorite film in the world.
LaKira Porter: My twin sister and I were drawn to animation. It was just, I guess the colors and stories that these people could create with their drawings. Shows like Animaniacs, Tiny Tunes, but more so in my generation. What got me into this industry was Gravity Falls, Stephen Universe, Adventure Time, shows from what I call the Renaissance era of Cartoon Network. And I kind of just stumbled my way into working at Luv Letter through voiceover work and then getting into the intricacies of what happens behind the scenes and wanting to help out even more as a PA.
You all have such varied stories and interests, which I’m sure is beneficial for your work together. Kennedy, I’m curious about your experience working with major studios like Disney. How did that help you advance your skillset and what did you find was missing in that space that you knew Luv Letter Studios could fulfill?
Freeman: When I first got my internship with Disney, it was right after college. I was fortunate enough to be able to learn about the production side of a show in the beginning, middle, and end, because I actually did work at DreamWorks before that while I was in college… I got to see the inner workings of how production goes. One thing that I did take away from it was that there weren’t a lot of people like us in the field. It was a bit of an eyeopener, just kind of learning about the struggles that even the people that were in the room trying to advocate for us were dealing with, trying to make sure the characters were dark enough, and then executives being like, “Oh, well, you might have to make them two shades lighter.”
It was a very difficult experience to see early on in my career, but I think that was enough for me to know that sometimes we have to do things our way. We have to kind of push it and make sure that we’re able to get what we want out of animation.
Absolutely. And that led you to founding Luv Letter Studios! What is the process for starting this type of venture and how did you find people like Jannah and LaKira to partner with?
Freeman: During my break at Disney, I said that I wanted to make my own original projects. I don’t know if you’ve heard of The Three Tomes, but that’s another indie series that’s being created by Breana Navickas, who also worked at Disney. They were actually the person that jumpstarted me into wanting to start this venture. So around 2023, I was like, well let me start making a proof of concept. Let me start scripting. And then I met a voice actor named Waves Joe Star, and he wound up asking me if I had any voice actors or a team. At that point it was just me, but he said he could help. That’s how I wound up meeting LaKira and my friend Julie introduced me to Jenna, and we ended up creating together, which led to Luv Letter Studios becoming an outsource studio for anime.
I love that. Jannah, what are some of the skill sets that a good animator needs to be successful and unique in this industry?
Manneh: A good animator should also understand the principles of acting. They should watch movies a lot. They should be able to understand what it’s like to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. I feel like if you’re good at that kind of stuff and you’re an animator, it gives more life to your animations and your drawings.
And for you LaKira, can you talk more about how voice acting and animation work in tandem and what a good animator should do to find success?
Porter: I am not an animator, but I help do production, assistant work, and project management. But voice acting and animation work hand in hand because for the most part, depending on what production it is, the voice comes first, and then you have to think about the acting and translate the voice into the animation so it can all come together into a beautiful picture.
I think the biggest thing to success as an animator would be open-mindedness and being open to criticism. You’re going to have people who’re working above you. You have to listen to your whole production team. So you have to be open to criticism and just open-mindedness to be like okay, I can add the critiques and make my work better.
Absolutely. Jannah and LaKira, how has Luv Letter helped you grow creatively and what are some things you hope to accomplish in your career next?
Manneh: When it comes to your artistic journey, it’s very solo. It’s like you’re stuck in your head, you’re drawing by yourself, you’re doing all this stuff by yourself. But working with a team allows me to think a little bit more creatively because I am putting myself in somebody else’s head for a little bit. I’m getting critiques from a bunch of different people and different perspectives. And I feel like just in general, it’s helping me broaden my perspectives when it comes to how I think of art and how I think of animation. So that’s been nice.
Porter: I think mainly for me, it’s the community aspect. I feel like Luv Letter is very tight knit, but career wise, I think it helped with gaining my confidence. After seeing so many talented people around me, it made me want to push myself to go beyond the limits.
That’s amazing, and it is great to be able to do work that you’re passionate about with people who look like you! Kennedy, I understand that there’s a Kickstarter for Luv Letter Studios that’s currently live. Can you tell me more about that?
Freeman: Yes. So we are working on our project called Towards Galaxies End, which is about a girl named Amina, who’s voiced by the lovely Kira Porter. But after dying in a car accident from saving her friend, Ami gets a chance to come back to life, but as an extinct species. She finds out that there’s seven other girls like her and says they are going to form a Magical Girl group so they can be space vampires together. Everyone else is like “she’s crazy,” but it’s okay [laughs].
What a cool project to launch! I cannot wait to see it come to life. What are ways that people can support your work?
Freeman: Definitely following Luv Letter Studios on social media. Whenever an episode of a show we’ve worked on comes out, we share it so that way you can follow it and know about the artists as well. But a lot of the artists also have on the website their own Instagrams and stuff, so definitely give them a shout out, look at their work, see if they need anything, because anime doesn’t pay that much.
Porter: For me, you could just follow my Instagram and my Twitter, which is @kaotic.kaiii. And there’s my website, lakiraporter.com, that has all my social media information.
Manneh: I guess following my socials, I’m not going to lie, I get really excited when I see people watching the stuff that we worked on and getting hyped over TV and all that stuff. But I’m not the most active on social media. I feel like I’m more of an under the radar kind of person. But I’m @bananajamjar on Instagram.
Check out Luv Letter Studios on Instagram!
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Source: Kiat Media
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