Now on Kickstarter: ‘Black Anime: Lost Chill-dren of the Diaspora’

I know Mike Toney from his amazing Instagram account, which you should totally follow by the way. Black Nerd Problems has reposted his art time and time again. Toney started doing client work in 2016, and two short years later he was tapped to do freelance character design for Cartoon Network and promotional work for Marvel Studios’ Black Panther (2018). He attributes this rapid ascension to his commitment to drawing every single day, no matter what. But overall, he’s most proud of his conscious decision to make characters of color that everyone can enjoy. He’s currently working on a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund a very important project close to his heart. One that means so much to him: Black Anime: Lost Chill-dren of the Diaspora. A 94-page art book spanning two years of his personal work, this art book is inspired by ancient mythology and the African diaspora.

“I determined that all of my characters and stories would draw from African mythology and the African diaspora.”- Mikey Toney Art Director and illustrator  Mike Toney is a lifelong lover of anime—beginning with faves like Escaflowne, Tenchi Muyo!, and Yu Yu Hakusho. Black Anime: Lost Chill-dren of the Diaspora is a collection of his work between 2016-2018, but the inspiration for the project came from his childhood art. Growing up, Toney never drew Black heroes because he never saw them in the series he loved. In the video on the Kickstarter page, he mentions a memory of being young and his father questioning h…