Keith White, Co-founder of AfroAnimation Summit

Chevy Wolf

Keith White is a media and tech executive who co-founded AfroAnimation Summit with Rio Cyrus. He’s looking to provide the next generation of creators with the tools necessary to get ahead in an industry that’s in flux.

This mindset—which helped birth an annual event that’s grown to 9,000 participants, shaped his lecture series Margin to Mainstream: The Evolution of Black Animation, and was the drive behind his latest venture Loopi—has set the tone for the way White conceives of how an independent creator pushes forward even in times of professional and artistic uncertainty.

I caught up with White on a video call after AfroAnimation Summit 6.0, which took place in Burbank, California at the tail end of April.

How AfroAnimation 6.0 Supported Creators

The event serves as a means of bridging the gap between creators and access to major studios and companies. This is an issue that’s becoming more fraught in an industry that’s consolidating and navigating the age of AI while local, state, and federal officials struggle to regulate the fast-evolving technology.

But at the summit, speakers and attendees also addressed a concern that’s spreading through creative communities dealing with DEI rollbacks and contracting opportunities—Is there a place for me in animation?

White spoke of how the event, which was the largest in-person gathering he and Cyrus have put on yet, provided participants with 30+ workshops and panels where they were able to connect, net new potential partnerships, and start discussing collaborations.

He said, “Maybe with all the stuff that’s going on, you know, politically against subsets and the consolidations of studios in the industry, perhaps there might be less jobs. People, certainly of color, might feel like there might not be a space for them, but from what I took away from a lot of things that I heard is that now they're re-inspired that they feel like there is a space.”

White phrased the feedback the team behind the summit received as validation that creators of color are here and they’re unified. He pointed back to the number of attendees, the connections that were made, and the information that was shared as proof of this validation.

He continued, “I think the overall theme is that we see you as a creator of color and that despite what’s going on outside, all the noise, that there is a space for creators of color…if you were unsure because of all the noise you got some confirmation.”

What is Loopi?

Aside from this reaffirming of belonging, White championed indie filmmakers and creators. He encouraged them not to wait for studios. He stated, “As a creator, you need to go out and create and create and then at some point you’ll hit your sweet spot or inflection point,” believing that the work and the process of learning through that work is what moves the needle.

But White is all too aware of the barriers that can impede creatives as they build. That’s why he’s preparing to launch Loopi, a platform for high quality, cinematic live-action and animation shorts that’s meant to be a testing ground for filmmakers to catch the eye of brands and studios.

According to the exec, “The problem in the industry, if you think about it from the creator-facing side in terms of structural barriers, is there’s really no meaningful monetization that enables massive scale. No true platform built for premium short-form cinematic storytelling.”

He added, “You can build audiences, but you can’t have a sustainable career the way the structure and platforms exist today. Viewers are often frustrated because it’s endless clutter and chaotic feeds around the content.”

White explained that Loopi would bypass the low-hanging fruit. He acknowledged the platform’s similarity to the short-lived Quibi since it is geared toward short, cinematic TV stories. However, per the exec, Loopi isn’t chasing after the mobile vertical audience. It’s actually a counter response to this growing trend. One that prioritizes true filmmakers, which he doesn’t think are interested so much in verticals.

Loopi’s Quality Driven Mission

Loopi is a user-generated, general market platform, but it will be filtered for quality. The service’s team will decide what content will be hosted. The decision behind this is two-fold. White wants to ensure creators have a distribution channel that isn’t competing for attention with low investment, fast-produced content that’s geared toward social behavior on platforms like TikTok instead of TV viewing behavior. And he wants to provide studios with brand safe partnership opportunities.

The TV audience is what he’s interested in, the prospective viewers that will tune into three to 22 minute shorts on Loopi for the quality. Who’d binge episodic series, create watch lists, take advantage of the continuous autoplay, and pay for a premium subscription to experience the platform ad-free and gain early access to episodes.

Loopi is designed to be a revenue stream for filmmakers through built-in ad monetization and a means to prove the draw of their IP to studios through data insights on their content. The goal is for the platform to be a pipeline from independent creation to deals with major players in the industry.

As White put it, “The indie creators are getting better and better with content making. I think that there’s this huge upside, not necessarily for the vertical microdrama because I think that that's perhaps a different type of filmmaker. But I think those filmmakers that are out there, and we're talking in the millions if you look at it worldwide, are truly investing in short form content more and more.”

He continued, “Loopi addresses [this], in terms of distribution platform and monetization, just simply because of the rise of the quality of content, the number of pieces of content or the quantity of content that’s coming out.”

The Battle Over AI In Creative Spaces

When I asked White about the areas he believes creators should concentrate on and develop over the next few years, he spoke of taking advantage of advanced tools and dug into AI as one such tool that he sees creators leaning more into for the sake of cutting costs and time.

White acknowledged the controversy and debate about AI in the creative fields. He shared that at this year’s summit there was push back over an artist using the tool in his work for the event. Five artists had been employed to design for the summit, one of whom does a lot of illustrations for AfroAnimation. That artist used AI to vectorize, or refine some of the rigid lines in his art and had disclosed that he’d done so.

At the time, White was concerned because the event pushes for human creators. The artist explained that AI was used for a very small part of his work. White went to the summit’s senior creative director to verify the percentage, and he agreed that it was a very small percent. Despite this, there were speakers who chose to back out of their commitment because of their stance on the use of AI.

The exec personally sees AI as a tool that’s no different than the horse buggy in that it gets creators from point A to point B. He’s not of the belief that it’s going to make animators and artists obsolete if it’s adopted, and there was programming centered on responsible use of AI at the summit. However, he does think the finance side of the business of creation is going to play a role in how it’s used and why. Because, as White put it, the issue is going from a short to a full feature and “a full feature film is the holy grail.”

He gave the example of generating downtown Tokyo with AI versus going to the city with a camera crew.

White said, “As these tools get better and better and they become as realistic as actually shooting, you’re going to see creators leaning more into that just from a cost perspective. If it's less expensive for you to just generate that via an AI tool versus going, as I said, to Tokyo to shoot that with cast and crew, then you probably take that bet every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I see that as part of the future and what creators will be leaning into…it's just some portion of what you do as a filmmaker to offset some expenses and some cost.”

As for the environmental concerns around data centers, the exec puts that squarely in the hands of the government. He hopes that regulations are enacted to protect the environment and that the laws are in favor of the American people. But that the government will need to catch up on technology as oftentimes it’s behind on the advancements being made in tech.

Meeting In The Middle On AI

When it comes to protecting IP, White is firmly in the camp of transparency around AI usage and ensuring the rights of the original artist aren’t exploited. Whether that’s through blockchain technology or a repository that identifies new and existing content along with whether it’s being used without consent and compensation in AI-generated media.

But White isn’t of the mind that AI doesn’t have a place in the creative fields. When we discussed the initial reaction to Disney’s ASL re-imagination of hit songs from their popular movies, which had been assumed to be AI and was drawing severe criticism online until people learned a team of 20 animators and the Deaf West Theatre partnered to make the collection, White pushed back on the idea that AI can’t be used at all in animation.

He said, “Are you saying as an artist like absolutely it has to be—everything created by the studio has to be 100% created by a human artist? Do I buy that argument? Is that realistic? Is that going to exist? No.”

White added, “I think you’re in business and you hold a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. So if you can save money in some aspect of your production and be able to share with your investors or those returns to investors through the advent of cost savings, you're going to do that.”

But he does believe in putting a label, a seal, or some kind of demarcation that shows the audience viewing a film or television series whether it was created by human artists. Where creatives and companies can meet in the middle on the issue of AI is a question for White, too.

He said, “But I think this sort of battle probably will continue between human artists who are like “By no means necessary” because the feeling is any encroachment on human artists’ livelihood is a risk. So people are willing to sort of jump on the bandwagon and cause some negativity towards the company that they think is using AI,” but he knows that companies have the upper hand in deciding to use it, which is why regulation and transparency is so important.

However for White, during our conversation, the topic we often returned to was the value inherent in human creation and how that’s not going anywhere even with AI. He believes the best outcomes will come from human intelligence plus artificial intelligence.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

The work White’s focused on and the art he’s seen is building upon the legacy of the giants that came before.

His lecture series Margin to Mainstream, which is being developed into a documentary, spotlights 70 years of Black thought and creation in animation. He shared, “I’ve always felt that we need to create our own narratives and you have these amazing trailblazers that have been part of the industry since the late 50s, but there was nothing that was consolidated to give you an understanding, an evolution of their impact. I think it was really important to do that.”

As we spoke, White referenced Floyd Norman (the first Black in between artist Disney hired), Leo Sullivan who co-founded Vignette Films with Norman, Brenda Banks (one of the first Black professional animators), Ron Husband (the first Black animator at Disney), and The Proud Family franchise creator Bruce W. Smith.

He remembered racing home and waking up on Saturday morning to watch cartoons like The Flintstones, Fat Albert, and Scooby-Doo but he had no idea that people of color were involved in their production. While White doesn’t think that knowledge in itself would have made him become an animator—he mentioned, “My brother is way more talented at drawing than I am.”—he does believe it would have been inspiring.

White holds tight to the idea that you cannot become what you cannot see. So he’s unearthing what he likens to Hidden Figures but in animation via Margin to Mainstream. His goal is to help people discover the rich history of Black creatives who work in the medium and their contributions to the classics we know and love today.

Talent has never been the issue. Access has and White is focused on opening doors, capitalizing on opportunities, educating, and fostering community. To him, you close the gap by meeting the moment and that’s done through creating, it’s done through the work.

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