‘Lil Kev’ Supervising Director Musa Brooker Brings Philly Authenticity To The BET+ Series

Adult animation continues to expand its reach into new genres and networks, as evidenced with last week’s premiere of Lil Kev on BET+. Based on the formative years of superstar comedian Kevin Hart, the series follows his 12-year-old self growing up in the ’90s in North Philadelphia.

Lil Kev is BET+’s first original adult animated series. It was developed by Hart and showrunners Matthew Claybrooks and Michael Price with supervising director Musa Brooker there to establish the uniquely drawn look of the series. Along with Aaron Brewer and AnnMarie Roberts (Good Times), Brooker directed four of the season’s ten episodes himself. The voice cast includes Hart as Lil Kev, Wanda Sykes as Nancy, Deon Cole as Uncle Richard Jr., Gerald Johnson as Henry, and Cree Summer as Gerald.

Brooker is a veteran animator who spent many years in stop-motion animation at Chiodo Brothers Productions, Screen Novelties, and Shadowmachine. He then expanded into working on a broad range of animation from 2d to cg for national commercials and music videos. As the creative director of Six Point Harness animation studio, Brooker was an animation sequence director for projects ranging from Amazon’s The Boys to FX’s Atlanta.

But Lil Kev marks Brooker’s first time developing the visual aesthetics of an animated series, and then directing full episodes. Cartoon Brew caught up with him to learn about how the city of Philadelphia (also his hometown) inspired not only Hart’s history, but the look of the series. Lil Kev is available to stream now on BET+, but the first episode is available for free on Youtube and is embedded below.

Cartoon Brew: How did Lil Kev come across your desk and what about it grabbed your interest?

Musa Brooker: I’ve been a big fan of Kevin’s comedy for a long time before this project was even on the horizon. I was actually approached by the producer of the show, David Ichioka. I had worked with him many, many years ago. He was a supervising director on a project that I worked on at Will Vinton in Portland. I spent a good chunk of my career as a stop-motion animator and director, and so I knew David from that. And another former producer of mine also works at ShadowMachine, and had recommended me.

With regard to what made this project so exciting to me — so much of my career as a director up to this point has been in short-form work — commercials, web series, animated segments, etc. So part of what was so engaging, even if a bit daunting, was getting to work in a longer form narrative. It’s a different beast, but I was excited for the challenge.

As the supervising director, how early did you come in during development and what were you responsible for in terms of the overall look of the show?

Every show is a little bit different. One of the things that I learned throughout my career, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done before, every show is a new group of people and new situations. I was brought in early to really help establish the look of the show. I led the visual development team. One of the things that was important to not just the showrunners, Michael Price and Matthew Claybrooks, but also to BET and to Shadowmachine was to try something new and different. There is kind of a standard look for primetime adult animation so it was a priority to myself, and to everyone in the leadership, to try to do something a little bit different, special, and unique, but not too far. We wanted people who are already fans of primetime animation to be comfortable, but we did want a little bit of a different flavor, so that was a priority. I brought onboard a number of visdev artists, who I’d worked with before, and some former students, actually, which is really exciting. We spent, I want to say about a month-and-a-half, two months, just sort of working through the look of the show and working with the producers and BET and going back and forth. We really started with a broad brush.

Did Kevin Hart have a brief about what he wanted to see in the show?

The direction came more from the showrunners. They were very hands on. They’re not visual artists themselves, but they’d done some development on this on their own, so they definitely wanted something that would be unique and interesting. We went to town and then it’s kind of like sculpting. We whittled it down. We tried a lot of different types of styles and aesthetics, some that were much closer to traditional primetime shows and some that were really far from it. I’m a big comic nerd and an influence was Calvin and Hobbes, just the sort of inky line. I’m a fan of seeing the hand of the artists in the work. I like when things aren’t too polished, where you can see the fingerprints in the stop-motion puppets, or, you see a bit of a process. So, that was something that I brought to it and wanted to see in the look of everything. We had a number of great artists, including the art director, Amanda Lake, who played a big role. She was a visual development artist [at first], and once we moved into the actual production, she became the art director, and took what we had established and really went to town.

How much of the artistic culture of Philadelphia was an influence on this series?

I tend to go back to Philly a couple times a year, but I went back a few more times during the project, just to go and take pictures and explore what was Kevin’s neighborhood. He grew up in North Philadelphia, and so I’m familiar with North Philadelphia. My mother grew up in North Philadelphia, a different part, but in North Philadelphia, and my grandmother’s house is still there. And so I went back, and my mom drove me around. I took lots of pictures because you’ve got to be authentic. We tried really hard to get the architecture and the color and the feel of the town.

We had such an extraordinary team of artists, designers, and painters. Our crew was a fantastic mix of people that I already knew and had worked with and people that I had never met or worked with before. Everyone was so collaborative and together we were able to “plus” the initial ideas and find the show together. It was wonderful to get to start and guide the beginning of that process. We were able to dig into some specifics not only of Philadelphia culture, but Black Philadelphia culture of the time. There were lots of little specific things we dropped in there, from the distinctive architecture, to the color and style of the street signs, to making sure Frank’s soda, an iconic Philly brand, had a shout out. I even think we got a couple of “jawns ” in there.

Kevin Hart in real life was a small kid in the city trying not to draw the attention of the bullies in his neighborhood. How did his diminutive stature influence the presentation of your characters, and finding the right look for animated Kevin and his family?

It’s a process, especially when you’re working with such a well known figure. Again, we started very broadly. We didn’t feel necessarily — and they let us know that we weren’t compelled — to have it look exactly the way he looked as a child. And so, there was some freedom in that from the showrunners, from the producers, and from the network as well. But we still wanted to have a feel of his personality. One of the things that’s at the heart of the show, really, is Kevin’s optimistic outlook on life. It’s one of his defining features, not just in the show, but it seems like in real life. To have grown-up in North Philly, which is a tough part of town, that shines through. Not just in the writing of the show, but in the look and how we view him.

It’s called Lil Kev and he’s also short in stature, so we wanted that to be a part of the show. He’s looking up and looking around and there’s a slight distortion on how the buildings looked and felt; we were calling it wonkiness. We didn’t want it to be too wonky, but a little bit. And just making sure that at the heart of the show and at the heart of his character, is someone who is realistic about the world, knows the world, but chooses to see it in a positive light. It was one of the things that drove us to Kevin’s character design, especially. We wanted to make sure all the characters were distinctive in their silhouettes, distinctive, but also fit together in the same aesthetic and the same worlds. Each one of them has such a unique flavor and personality, the main cast especially.

In adult animation, there are all kinds of choices that you can make with the visuals that determine how far are we gonna go with the R-rated elements. How was that discussed and implemented for Lil Kev?

So much of that really came from the showrunners, them wanting to push those boundaries, knowing that it was streaming and knowing that it was an adult comedy. The thing that’s kind of tricky for folks is when it’s a cartoon. Obviously, especially in America, people associate it with kids and especially because this is the story of a kid growing up. But we did want to have that sort of rawness that is part of Kev’s comedy, and part of the reality of growing up in Philadelphia in the ’90s in North Philly. We spent a lot of time thinking about it. What can work? What can we get away with? Always keeping in mind what’s funny, visually and pacing-wise.

It’s a script-driven show, so it started with the page, but there was a lot of collaboration not just within the writers’ room, but in the [voice] records. I was there for most of the records. There were times when we were throwing out lines and the actors were improving, even though the heart of it was always the written word. Trying to find that balance between grittiness, but also a heart. His last name is Hart, but that was also very important for the showrunners and for the team to make sure that even though there’s an edge to Kevin’s comedy and there’s an edge to the visuals, there’s also real emotions and real heart.

You directed the pilot which establishes so much in terms of look, tone, pacing. As the show found its production and animation groove, how much did it evolve by the season finale?

There are a million little things when you’re establishing a show on the first season and the pilot. You’re doing a lot of heavy-lifting. And it definitely evolved as the season went on. It’s sort of the idea of seasoning and letting it sit and simmer and come together. Really, we hit our stride later on in the season. But I think so much of what we got out of that first episode helped us get there. Not just the look of the show, but the look of the neighborhood, the feel of the characters, and also how they moved. We did have a quick schedule so it was important that we establish the feel of the characters and the city and the storytelling, but it really did evolve.

The opening sequence as we pan through the neighborhood helped establish from the beginning that the city of Philadelphia and Kev’s neighborhood specifically is almost a character itself. We also started the use of the split-screen, seeing the world through multiple perspectives in certain sequences to help tell the story and add to the humor. Taking advantage of the medium we also changed the background style, art, and colors to enhance certain emotional moments and experiences. For instance, the fantasy sequence of Kev showing off his basketball skills for Rhe Rhe, or the explosive colors and designs behind Uncle Richard explaining how to “Say it with your chest!,” and showing Kev how to play “Jail Ball.” These are just a few examples of conventions we established early that helped us find the voice and style of the show.

I’m really happy with the overall tone of the show. I’m happy with the quirkiness of the characters. We spend a lot of time on the details of the characters and how they move, and how they interact with each other. The personalities shine through, and the complexity of the characters. It seems a little simpler at first glance, but there’s a complexity to the world and to the characters. There’s a deepness to it, even the love and the longing between the parents [Nancy and Henry Hart]. And it was fun to establish how the characters moved. There were some signature lines that they have, and seeing some of those repeated; I was really happy with Henry’s “Yadda D” that he says and the shoulder shimmy. It was something that we developed early on, but we tried to use it every time he said that line.

What’s the future of Lil Kev? Did you get a multiple season order, or does BET+ need to see how people respond to this first season to continue?

The reality of it is that it’s one season. It’s new for the network. I think they want to see how well it does. Kevin’s got a big audience. Animation’s got a big audience. And so, hopefully those things will come together, and we’ll get a season two. We’re hopeful. I would love to come back for season two just because we set up this world, and we just started playing with it. It would be so much fun to continue to explore the characters in the world and Kevin’s perspective on things.