I just had the idea that it’d be cool to take a similar premise of what’s found in these videos but then give it that extra animated component of the hair having a mind of its own.”Īfter brainstorming the idea for “Hair Love,” Cherry launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2017. “It was something that they weren’t used to seeing, specifically black dads interacting with their daughters in this way. “(The videos’ popularity) was more so because people thought it was an anomaly,” Cherry said. The videos were cute, but Cherry found that their popularity was a double-edged sword. When Cherry first began developing the idea for the film, he was particularly interested in why people responded to the hair videos that went viral. “I saw this as my opportunity to showcase the average American family with a very specific and unique problem and show how they’re able to overcome the stuff that they’re dealing with.” “Two years ago, before ‘Coco’ and ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ there really wasn’t a lot of representation in animated films,” Cherry said. “Hair Love” is part of a changing animation landscape that is expanding to tell more diverse and varied stories with emotional power. While the story is thematically about love and family, Cherry said the film also serves as an opportunity to expand representations of both family and fatherhood. Cherry – he had never seen a character who looked like that before.Ī few years later, Cherry said he was watching viral videos of black fathers doing their daughters’ hair when the idea for an animated short film clicked with that initial image he had seen.Ĭherry’s animated short film “Hair Love” opened in theaters August 14, debuting before “The Angry Birds Movie 2.” The short film tells the story of a young girl named Zuri and her father as he faces the challenge of styling her hair into puff buns for the first time.

This post was updated August 18 at 9:39 p.m.Īn online animated image of an Afro-Latino character stuck with UCLA Extension alumnus Matthew A.

Angry birds 2 online latino