The power of storytelling through Indigenous animation

In 2020, Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison publicly declared he would sail the Endeavour as a way to honour the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia. At the time, the PM said the plan would "help Australians better understand Captain Cook’s historic voyage and its legacy for exploration, science and reconciliation" and "rediscover him a bit because he gets a bit of a bad show." 

Cooked, which is equal parts provocative and hilarious, turns the government's memorialisation plan and the legacy of Captain Cook on its head, while amplifying a perspective that needs to be heard. The online animation series, which was funded by Screen Australia, was created by Jake and his team at Studio Hackett. Thirteen of the crew who worked on Cooked are UTS alumni or current students, with seven identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.  

Entering the industry 

Q: Take us back to 2016 when you finished your Bachelor of Design in Animation. How did you get your first gig in the industry? 
A: I was really lucky.  Immediately out of uni I was trying to freelance and find gigs to support what was at the time, a very luxurious hobby of drawing and animating. Which I soon found out was not quite as lucrative as I imagined. 

So, along comes this brief and it hits me in the guts. There was this young lady in Ngukurr up in the Northern Territory. She had this incredible story where she was trying to absorb and preserve as much of her native lingo, Marra, as possible. But the thing was, only three Elders, who were on their death bed, could still speak it. So, here you have this language and its embedded cultural practice, that had existed for thousands of years, now on the brink of extinction and Angelina making moves to keep it alive. This is the story I was tasked with capturing. 

SBS recorded Angelina telling her story, and soon after, contacted me and gave me a shot. At the time it was a big, high-profile client for me. I’d just come out of uni, was laying carpets at night and trying to make it work as an animator by day. I was lucky enough to work quite closely with the community, which shaped so much of my consultative process – but also with a great producer and coding team from SBS. Together we created an animated app called My Grandmother's Lingo.  

Essentially, it’s an interactive platform for education through storytelling, with great outcomes in the way that narratively told an important story, but it also reinjected language back in the community and back into the curriculum. Most importantly, Marra is being spoken again in Ngukurr by the young kids. It's on their phones, on their iPads, on their computers. But it’s also travelled across the world and now Marra words are being spoken internationally. 

“That was the first taste of telling really powerful things through this medium. It can be captivating, engaging, and entertaining, but it can also really serve underrepresented people and underrepresented communities and unheard stories. That was, sort of, my foray into the world of animating.

Jake Duczynski
Designer, animator and director 

Q: When and how did the idea for Cooked come about?
A: It began when the Australian National Maritime Museum got in contact with me and said, ‘Hey, let's build a learning app that offers a different perspective to Cook’s voyage – a First Nations perspective. Let’s talk about Tierra Del Fuego, Tahiti, Tupaia, New Zealand, and up the East Coast of Australia’. But, to do this properly and to consult meaningfully across these communities, it was a lot of research and a lot of animation, with champagne taste on a beer budget. 

Initially, I said, ‘No, I'm unable to take this on. But, as a thought for the future or another project we can collaborate on, here’s what I really think. Here's what I think about the resailing of the Endeavour. Here's my perspective and what I would actually like to say’. It was a one-page outline for an adult animation. With it, I also wrote a mock counter letter, under the alias of this infuriated patriot from Cronulla, who was incredibly supportive of Scott Morrison's decision and couldn’t bear to have his cultural integrity stripped from him – Australia Day, Captain Cook, sausages, Summernats – all those kinds of cultural liberties. 

I presented them with these two very different perspectives. One that was my own and the other was this fervorous patriot. That was it. And I just sent that to them, as a sort of no thanks but check this out, we might be able to do something in the future. And to my surprise they said, hey let’s do it, you should make it. 

It was initially this two-minute, tiny, little animation. There was an initial batch of funding from the Maritime Museum and I thought why don’t I try scale that up? So, I brought it to a production company which was Studio Hackett and they helped with applying for more funding from Screen Australia, Create NSW and the ABC. 

It was a wild ride – about 15 months from conception to release – which in animation world is crazy fast. The team was incredible, and funnily enough, I merged with the studio earlier this year. When 2021 came around the corner, James (Hackett) kind of went, ‘Hey look, this is working well, why don't we just merge?’. So, in 2021 we went 50/50 co-ownership of a new company, called Studio Gilay, very soon to be announced officially.  

How animation can make an impact

Q: Were there any other animations or productions that merged culture into the work and gave you that inspiration?  
A: I don't remember too much being out there that I had seen in the animation space. And I think that’s why I pushed it so hard and still do. I remember looking up to Ivan Sen and Warwick Thornton, working in a live-action space and exploring our truths through their craft. That’s what I wanted to do, but in animation.  

With my own family, there is such fractured cultural knowledge and language fluency in our community. Many of our Elders, like my nan, were told not to speak the language, or practice culture on the mission, homes they were taken to or stations where they worked. They were stripped of their identity, told to assimilate, or removed from their family.  

To see a show like Cooked, as an emerging First Nations animator when I was going through uni, would've been amazing -  to know that there was a space there for my perspective, for our history and our culture.

Q: What’s something people might not know about animation?  
A: I think one of the most beautiful things about animation is how collaborative it can be. On Cooked, we tried to facilitate for collaborative opportunities at every stage. I wanted to bring as many First Nations perspectives across the scope of production – from the cultural consultants, to the writer's room, to the interns, designers, and animators – we had Indigenous men and women from various communities. 

We just brought as many people along for the ride as possible and listened. We asked them: What do you think about Scott Morrison's decision to resail the Endeavour? What do you think about Cook? What do you think about this system that was designed above us, without us and not for us? What does that mean to you?  

And hearing those reflections and those responses really motivated the project and gave it this varied, but properly shared perspective.

Q: How did you discover the type of art style you used in Cooked?  
A: We didn't have the most luxurious budget and so we tried to create something that was quite economic and the style that you see is reflective of Rick and Morty or Big Mouth. It's called rigged animation. I think it was quite important for us for the economy of animation to be established quite early on so that we could focus more on the storytelling. It's a nice, forgiving style. It's quite easy to watch. 

Within that, you can trojan horse in a couple of hard truths, because it's quite palatable. It's like, ‘Oh, it's all very saturated and bright and lovely. Let's talk about some history’.  

Takeaways from UTS 

Q: What opportunities at UTS did you feel were really valuable to you while studying? 
A: I was lucky in the way that I was one of the first cohorts to go through the animation degree. We were the 44 students that went through as the guinea pigs, and we were so lucky in the way that we had a great tutor to student ratio. Damian Gascoigne and Deborah Szapiro who were course coordinators at the time, were such advocates of speaking your truths and telling your story, and drawing from the world that you know. They wanted to make filmmakers and storytellers. That's what they were trying to facilitate for, within that degree. They didn't want students to be only technically proficient. 

For me, that was a really, really valuable experience at UTS. Having people who were experienced telling you that your truths have value and that the story that you tell being intrinsic to your identity is important.  

Q: Do you have any advice for someone who was looking to enter this industry? 
A: Yeah, come to UTS! Just do you; tell your story. No one knows your story better than you do. Know where your well of storytelling is and draw from that. Places like UTS are fantastic for facilitating and allowing you to unfurl into your most authentic-animator self. 

Jake Duczynski is a 2016 Bachelor of Design in Animation (Honours) graduate. The degree is now known as the Bachelor of Animation Production. He was also a recipient of the UTS Young Alumni Award in 2017. 

View Cooked on ABC.

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Alysson Zamora