Ckrowd, Africa’s leading, premium content streaming platform, has announced its partnership with Nigeria-based studio, Brown Roof Studios to create original content around African mythological heroes and heroines and develop franchise series and characters. This partnership with Brown Roof Studio will employ the usage of digital marketing tool and innovative tool, Ckrowd Advert to distribute comics and graphic novels based on African culture to readers worldwide.
Founded in 2020 by a number of young talented Ibadan-based comic book creators, Brown Roof Studio has developed a universe of characters based on Nigerian and West African myths to finally narrate the rich, diverse and varied African folk tales and display the rich heritage of the Continent’s storytelling. Local cosmologies and mythologies, in particular across Africa, have been at times regarded as backward or even dubbed not relevant, which has led to a loss of cultural memory across different generations of Africans and individual of African descent.
However, with the inception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe global audiences have been entertained with stories based on Norse tradition and discovered tales that might have not been conversant with. Therefore, with African culture, music and entertainment now taking centre-stage, this partnership between these technological giants showcase that the time is appropriate to showing animated, superhero and fantasy stories inspired by African historical culture and mythology.
The vast pantheon of Nigerian gods and goddess, from Sango, Ogun, Elegua, Elusu, Mami Wata, Oshun and Obatala to name a few, provide an extraordinarily diverse and varied set of tales with strong ethos and moral inspiration, which can teach and influence human life and different generations across the African continent and the Diaspora on important themes such as integrity, loyalty, love, friendship and family.
In the statement announcing the partnership, Crowd founder and CEO, Kayode Adebayo talked about the importance of bringing stories featuring characters from the vast African folklore to a wider audience and championing African storytelling and cultural heritage through animation: “We are truly delighted at the prospect of exploring and building intellectual properties that will endure for a long time with Brown Roof Studios, especially concerning the celebration of African heritage and folklore. We are enthused to be using Ckrowd’s innovative technology tools, data and platform to distribute graphic and animation content to a wider audience across the world. Additionally, we also delighted to support emerging designer in exploring new ways of monetising these properties and products.”
Ckrowd’s collaboration with Brown Roof Studio will create and develop comic characters which will be co-owned by the two companies, and Ckrowd will won the highest equity as they are co-funding the project.
Brown Roof Studio CEO, Success Ikupolati, added, “One of our goals in Brown roof Studios is to tell real, rich, beautiful and authentic African stories to the world. This partnership between our studio and Ckrowd will help foster that goal by promoting the richness of African culture and mythology through the unlimited reach of technology. Moreover, this collaboration will bring together a host of amazing African and Diasporan talent, telling African stories and we are delighted to have Ckrowd’s support.”
Ckrowd will also support the studio with distribution, which has been one of the major value chain issues across the creative industry alongside conversations about monetisation and profit. Au contraire, on the basis of this announcement, industry professionals can attract glocal corporate partnerships, bolstering local brand recognition and ultimately increasing revenue generation. Additionally, Ckrowd will support Brown roof studio with one its greatest expertise, intellectual property protection, connecting creatives to the legal community to assist with intellectual property protection, which will allow them to maximise earnings on their creative works.
The goal of this new project is to tell unique African myth-based stories, support African and Diasporan creatives’ growth, economic development, and job creation.