Description
Alkebulan is an ancient name for Africa. Children of the First Sun is a gift to that name and to the children who will carry it: a picture of rising again that does not have to be borrowed, performed or loud to be real. For a continent too often told to build on someone else's foundations, it offers an image of standing rooted, in its own light, on its own ground.
The film is set in Alkebulan, an original Afrofuturist world built on seven Ashe frequencies: Sun, Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Thunder and Shadow. Kofi (Earth, Ile) and Kemi (Sun, Oorun) are siblings and rivals. Kofi sits rooted as his energy builds from the ground up. Kemi moves through a martial sequence, performing her power, then settles into the same stillness. Side by side, their two lights find one rhythm. In this world, rising again means rooted, not loud.
Both characters are styled as a Bantu-Kushite warrior fusion: broad gold collars, geometric beadwork, the ankh and the staff. Reference art was developed with ChatGPT and Grok, the 3D character assets were generated in Tripo, the shots were animated in PixVerse, and the film was edited in FFmpeg.
Kofi, Kemi and the Alkebulan world existed before the hackathon as original IP: a lore bible, the seven-frequency Ashe system and development material for Episode 1. The 3D assets, animation and film were all created during the hackathon.
How Tripo was used
The 3D character assets for Kofi and Kemi were generated in Tripo. In the pipeline, they sit between the reference art, developed with ChatGPT and Grok, and the shots, animated in PixVerse.
