South African-based studio Lucan on Thursday revealed that it is working on an animated series called “Isaura” that will fuse southern and eastern African coastal folklore and culture.
The series follows Isaura, a young girl from a fishing village in Mozambique, who attains the ability to breathe under water and communicate with turtles as she adventures through the east coast of Africa.
It will feature her fight to conserve the ocean, as well as various social and political climate change issues.
In addition, it will highlight different animals that are currently endangered and gives them a unique power to showcase the importance of their existence.
As the main character evolves, Lucan said that it would teach young audiences to be empowered, despite how small and insignificant they may feel at times.
Throughout the season, the series explores the streets and coast of Mozambique with Isaura and her family, who make their living as fishermen in a small fishing village.
To encompass the beauty of Mozambique and its natural surroundings, Lucan said that it went for a distinct, lush and textured look.
“Isaura” was created using 3D environments and hand-drawn characters to allow more flexibility during production.
Lucan said it designed its own real-time pipeline by using Unreal Engine, a game engine traditionally used to animate first-person shooter games.
According to Lucan, this unusual pipeline gave its team more flexibility in making big changes late in production that would simply not have been feasible with a traditional animation pipeline.
Lucan is an animation and film collective based in Cape Town.