The award-winning Johannesburg animation studio will present its biggest project yet next week at the Stuttgart Animation Festival’s Animation Production Days, part of founders Kabelo Maaka and Dr. Tshepo P. Maaka’s push to expand their weekly WebToon property into both a short film and TV series.
For the past six years, Johannesburg’s award-winning Cabblow Studios has made a name for itself in the unusual niche of 2D medical animation, creating short films like 3 Teaspoons of Sugar, The Little Teaspoon of Sugar, and When It’s Risky that focus on the emotional realities of being diabetic, creating informative social media posts about health and wellness, and producing promotional animations for dozens of clients like Sun Pharmaceuticals and Healthforce.
And while Cabblow - founded by mother and daughter duo Kabelo “Cabblow” Maaka and Dr. Tshepo P. Maaka (aka Dr. T) - has always been very vulnerable and open with personal family stories and references, the studio’s biggest project yet, Rorisang & the Gurlz, is inspired by Kabelo’s time spent in an R&B band during high school and is a departure from the studio’s long-time focus on medical animation.
“I always dreamed of making my own animated TV show,” says Kabelo, creative director at the studio. “Medical animation was a very clever way for us to carve out a niche for ourselves, and make sure that we could actually earn an income from animation before trying to make a TV show, because I know that journey is long. But as we've been getting better at doing medical animation, as we show up more in search engines, and as more people actually reach out to us for client projects, it's almost like that machine is starting to run itself.”
She continues, “So when we got a call from the International Federation of Film Producers’ Associations and Women in Animation program Stories x Women, it was like ‘Let's bring this project we’ve been developing on the side forward and see what happens.”
Rorisang & the Gurlz, currently a weekly WebToon and series of Instagram and Tik Tok reels created and illustrated by Cabblow, is being pitched by the studio as a 2D short film and animated series at The Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS) in Germany, taking place Tuesday, April 25 through Sunday, April 30. Cabblow will be presenting on “Diversifying the South African Landscape” Thursday, April 27.
Most recently, Rorisang and her band became tourism ambassadors in their first public animation for events guide “What's On in Cape Town.”
Take a moment to watch:
“We’ve decided to look at Rorisang & the Gurlz as a franchise rather than just an animated series and use this IP to really grow our studio,” says Dr. T, who serves as Head of Business Development and Director of Medical Animations. “We want to follow a similar business model to Hello Kitty and make something really massive. It's a very exciting time for us.”
The story follows Rorisang and her four friends as they form a K-Pop-inspired Afropop band at their all-girls Christian school. As the band faces challenges at their conservative, tradition-based high school, Rorisang herself straddles the line with wanting to please her family filled with high academic achievers.
“I’ve had this idea since high school, when my R&B band used to do school competitions,” says Kabelo.
Dr. T inserts, “And they used to win all the time.”
Kabelo continues, “We made Rorisang interested in K-Pop because that music is like the flavor of the century right now. But, over time, over social media, we will also share some of those similarities between Rorisang and her friends and me and my friends, because I realize people like to know the story behind the story.”
Staying true to the nature of Cabblow’s personal approach to their stories, Kabelo will be lending her singing voice to Rorisang while a character based on Dr. T will be featured as Rorisang’s mother.
“She loves K-Pop but is also trying to meet the standards of her mother and grandmother,” says Kabelo. “She goes to a conservative, all-girls school, which is how I grew up. I went to a Christian, all-girls school. And although my choir mistress wasn't terrible like Rorisang’s, that kind of strict, formal, more-than-130-years-of-tradition kind of thing, is the environment in which I spent my academic years.”
But Kabelo says the female-empowering and female-focused story won’t bash religion. In fact, the setting is a necessary detail to portraying an authentic, South African character in Rorisang.
“If I need to show diversity and be genuine and show my story as an African person, one of those realities is that we do have Christian schools, and we grew up in those contexts,” explains Kabelo. “And that's part of the reality of being from Africa that maybe people are not so aware of. When we would have discussions with potential distributors, that would be the thing they would just get stuck on, the faith bit. But that’s most of the schools in South Africa.”
Dr. T adds, “One of the producers from LA was like, ‘You cannot say anything about Christianity.’ And I'm like, that's the whole of who I am.’ We’re not going to force it down people's throats, but it is our reality.”
The push-back Kabelo and Dr. T faced in pitch meetings was a big reason the two decided creating Rorisang & the Gurlz as a WebToon was an important first step in their realization of the project.
“In negotiations that we've had with pre-sales and trying to get someone to produce our series, people wanted to take a big chunk, like 80 percent, of Rorisang, which meant that our IP would be owned by other people, and that they’d be able to change and exploit it,” explains Dr. T. “So, we decided to then have a weekly WebToon, have Rorisang on Tik Tok and on Facebook and Instagram, and then have Rorisang as an ambassador to see how people respond to different parts of Rorisang’s story and the show’s humor and prove that it has an audience.”
The WebToon’s success and Rorisang & the Gurlz being picked up as an ambassador for Cape Town tourism has given Kabelo and Dr. T more confidence for their presentation at ITFS.
“Rorisang also got chosen for ITFS and FMX’s Animation Production Days (APD), which is their pitching forum and curated business platform for the European and international animation industry,” says Kabelo. “Every time something like this happens, it just confirms to me that Rorisang is a show that people are interested in and want to watch.”
She adds, “I really enjoyed TV animation like As Told by Ginger and Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the characters are like growing up and growing into themselves. The issue in our story is not faith, it's pressure to succeed, and realizing that you create your own measure of success. Rorisang is not that strong in academics. But she's very artistically strong. And she's got a lot of tenacity. That's how she's going to become an achiever in her own eyes.”
Kabelo, Dr. T and the duo’s six-member staff at Cabblow have managed to get Rorisang & the Gurlz noticed, but in addition to their Germany film festival visit, they are working on raising investments to get more creatives in their studio, not only to get Rorisang off the ground, but also to ensure further possibilities with future projects and pitches.
“Rorisang is a big project, so we will definitely need people to help fund it and develop it,” says Dr. T. “I'm hoping that's what we will get when we go to Germany. In the last few years, Cabblow’s projects have been project-funded, or grant-funded. So, now, we’re ready to look at investors so that we can grow our team.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
