Durban songstress moves into animation
DURBAN born songstress Liyah London has assembled a stellar cast of creative professionals including a Grammy nominee to realise her dream of producing a global animated children’s TV series.
London, a pop star who is originally from Overport but moved to the US as a little girl, has already recorded some of the songs for the project and has brought well known Durban artist Nanda Soobben on board to do the animation.
London said that after extensive research on cartoons she decided that the series would target children between 3-9 years of age.
“My goal for this animation is to give children an amazing TV show to watch, where they can learn valuable lessons and fall in love with the characters and hopefully carry those lessons that they've learned with them throughout life,” she said.
The artist who has performed with several superstars like LLCool Jay, Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Pitbull and Jake Vaughn, said that she had done a few children's songs throughout her career and last year she felt inspired to create an entire children's animation.
“I already had an idea in mind, but my goal was to make it something super fun with a diverse group of animals, and make it educational for kids and basically teach them about teamwork, friendship, kindness and along the way they go on these adventures that will be obviously very educational for kids.”
London said her research showed that most animations, especially the big ones usually focused on one animal which would be a cat or a dog, and when the idea for the prospective series came to mind she decided to make it unique and use at least five animals.
“And the goal is basically to see the world through the eyes of animals because they're so innocent and this is going to be so appealing for all animal lovers. So they're all friends and they embark on these adventures together. It's just very sweet, and it just teaches so many lessons which could be from geography or being kind and standing up to bullies,” said London.
The singer who moved from pop to include rap and hiphop to her repertoire last year has already written the songs for the series and said that each episode would have its own song based on the lesson it sought to teach. Recording with a live band started in December.
She is hoping that the series will be ready to air by the end of this year or beginning of 2026.
“Right now we're just waiting for the actual animation to be completed. But with any great project there's always some setbacks so you have to factor that in,” she said. She was confident that children were going to love it because it' was fun and magical and peppered with jokes.
“I'm a visual person so how I envisioned this and how I created the animals and how I want them to look, it's just so fun and bright and adorable. When we wrote it we also put some funny punchlines in for the parents, because we had to make it fun for them too because they're going to have to probably watch it with their kids,” she laughed.
London said that when she conceptualised the animated series she knew that it would be impossible to do it all by herself and so she hand picked a group of individuals with excellent work ethic and that she knew that she could count on.
They include Taylor Unger, a long time friend and co-writer who helped to bring her vision to light. AJ Nilo a musician who she has known for many years was chosen to be the musical director for the project. Also on the music team is Rich E. Rich who "played on the tracks” said London. The ensemble also includes artist Chris Redding, a current Grammy award nominee for Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album, titled “Vision of Sounds De Luxe”.