Many Nigerian millennials and even Gen-Z grew up reading comic books and watching animations where the characters looked and dressed nothing like they did. The characters were the Snow Whites and Cinderellas who were blonde, wore ball gowns, and attended tea parties. It was always the narrative of the western world that Nigerian children grew up appreciating and desiring. All this is changing now, as Panaramic is now adapting Nigerian historical stories into comic books and animations for a global audience.
It is exciting to think that going forward, there will now be cartoon characters called Amina, Oduduwa, Obatala, and one can now watch their favourite cartoon characters dressing, talking and eating like Nigerians. It is going to be a whole new narrative, according to Tunji Anjorin, president and Co-founder of Panoramic entertainment.
“All my life watching cartoons and reading comic books, and I never saw names that look like mine or my relatives or my fathers, it sparked some sort of curiosity in me. There has been a one-world system of telling stories from only one part of the world. It changed a bit when we started seeing productions like Black Panther, Black is King, Coming to America and so on, but really it was a case of producers and sellers from the western world telling our stories and selling them to us.
“At Panaramic entertainment, we thought we could do it differently, from our perspective. We want to own our stories, and tell them to the rest of the world because we will do it right since it is our own,” Anjorin said on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour show.
Panaramic started in 2007, as a bootstrapped media production, distribution and original content development company. The goal was to take original content from Nigeria’s rich history and cultural heritage, and adapt them into easy to understand content for the local as well as the global audience. This takes the forms of comic books which are recently also available in digital formats, as well as animations which Panoramic media ventured into recently.
The premier product was 1897: The Benin kingdom, which was the first of the African historical comical series. This story is most recently being adapted into an NFT called Benin Bronze, cultural exchange project, in line with technological advancement into that space.
Stories cutting across different ethnic groups and states in Nigeria like Queen Amina of Zaria, Oduduwa, Eyo, Mary Slessor and Jaja of Opobo, among others, have also been adapted into comic books in print and digital format which are being used in schools across the country, and universities across the globe. Some of the contents are also being used by research institutions outside the continent.
It is a business that is serving the dual purpose of entertainment, education and even preservation of cultural heritage. From bootstrapping, the company has gone into other partnerships and projects to sustain financially as they progress. Patronage and bulk purchase of the comic books from schools also make for some encouragement and revenue.
There is also quite some hurdle to cross in the research process as there is not much documentation. However, the team explores the oral history which has been passed down, and also brings in research done in some academic circles, to merge into a single, robust and interesting plot.
“There are also some professors of some universities here and there; and then from those traditional anchors of history. If we have two stories that are close in many ways, we mesh them into one since we cannot be recounting two different versions of some story,” he explained.
Also, the entertainment and media sector is not as easy to break in, so more challenges come up along the way. Notwithstanding, Panaramic media has hit major milestones and its works continue to attract recognition and commendations across different circles.
Although the general perception is that comics and animations appeal to kids, there are several foreign animation movies in the Box office and they pool significant numbers in views and in revenue. This shows that even the older population find animations interesting too.
“We queue up to go to Disneyworld to take photos and we pay for them. That is them having us in their pockets and monetising. Thankfully, due to the advancement and emergence of NFTs, we are raising awareness like through this Benin Bronze project. If at some point in time, the next generation of kids can see Box office movies and content about Nigeria getting the most views and pulling audience, we would have achieved our core aim,” Anjorin noted.
Panaramic media operated from a physical office until COVID-19 hit, and businesses had to switch to a remote model. However, the company is now returning to working in a physical and bringing the illustrators, graphic designers, and animators under one roof, in order to encourage creativity.
For the next phase of growth, Panoramic media is pushing further into animations and the NFT space.
