Chaz Bottoms with some of his characters in a promotional image for his 2019 Kickstarter project "Battu: An Animated Musical." (Kickstarter)
Chaz Bottoms graduated in 2017 from DePaul with a BFA in Animation. Today he is a director, animator, writer and owner of
CBA Studios, a boutique animation studio based in Los Angeles that strives to represent diversity on-screen and behind the scenes.
Among the upcoming projects for Bottoms is
the animated musical series "Battu," which he will develop with Oscar winner Matthew A. Cherry for Cartoon Network. The show is based on Bottoms's animated short film of the same name. As he
tells the Chicago Sun-Times, it will be in many ways "the love letter to Chicago's creatives who live there."
"When it comes to musicals in Black representation and animation, it was really important for me to show diversity across the board," Bottoms adds. "Dancers come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I wanted to try to create a mosaic of Chicago that could be fun and inviting. Hopefully, we get the audience to see Chicago through my eyes and how I see the city."
Since graduating, Bottoms has collaborated with and produced content for SpringHill Company, Adult Swim, Steve Harvey Global, Bleacher Report, John Legend, Samantha Bee, Sony Music, Columbia Records, Atlantic Records, and Snapchat. He is also a character animator for Nickelodeon.
Bottoms recently
spoke with Ebony.com about fostering the Black animation community and opportunities for collaboration.
This article originally appeared in the College of Computing and Digital Media's July/August newsletter.