Several years ago, an itch to take kiddies’ storytelling further saw Phil Cunningham and his wife Jacqui make an interesting leap into film-making from chicken farming.

It was on the back of the release of Phil’s children’s book, “The Legend of the Sky Kingdom”.

This endeavour evolved significantly when he and his wife established Sunrise Animation Studios.

Their debut project was Africa’s inaugural feature-length animated film, rendered in 3D motion style, based on Phil’s book. What was remarkable about this undertaking was that it was based on puppets and a set design made out of trash sourced from a scrapyard closeby to their office.

In doing so, they pioneered an animation style known as junkmation.

The film was screened at festivals all over the world, and it led to the couple embarking on “Jungle Beat”, a 13-episode series created by Brent Dawes. It ended up running for eight seasons and fuelled two other spinoffs, “Munki and Trunk” and Jungle Beat Explorers”.

“Jungle Beat” found a new home on YouTube when the TV deals ran out, and, based on it exceeding 10 million subscribers, led to the release of “Jungle Beat: The Movie”, which was shown on Netflix when the pandemic struck.

Several years later, the husband and wife duo have dropped the sequel, “Jungle Beat 2: The Past”, which was released on the big screen on June 27.