FRIENDS WITH YOU x NETFLIX

Art collective FriendsWithYou, known for their surreal and colorful large-scale installations and playgrounds, will be taking their art to a whole new platform: television. It’s been announced that the LA-based duo of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III will be producing an animated children’s television show for Netflix called True & the Rainbow Kingdom, in collaboration with Guru Studio, Home Plate Entertainment, and Pharrell Williams’ creative venture i am OTHER.

According to an interview with artnet, True and the Rainbow Kingdom will be a deeper, more spiritual take on the formulaic genre with an aim to teach kids to care about the world around them.

“As artists, we really had no idea what the business of TV was, but from the beginning of our practice, we wanted to affect as many people as possible with this idea of an idealistic future—a vision of a future that’s good for the future of our world—and make that into something that reaches as many people as possible, especially kids,” Borkson told artnet News in a telephone interview.

“The idea is about love, compassion for the world and its inhabitants,” FriendsWithYou said on Instagram. “We make the world alive and model a sustainable planet as an aspiration vision of a bright rainbow future.”

Partners Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III are known for their post-pop art style and slightly-hallucinogenic characters usually brought to life in the form of paintings, sculptures, and sometimes larger-than-life costumes. You’ve probably seen their mark around town. The adorable Rainbow Valley playground at the Aventura Mall? That’s FriendsWithYou. The apathetic black and white cloud hanging in the Melin Building in the Design District? FriendsWithYou again.

They make happy cloud lamps, full-on Rainbow city installations, and something wonderful called Super Malfi. It’s easy to imagine FriendsWithYou’s cartoonish style in proper cartoon form, and yet, the venture is a total first.

The show centers around a young girl named True, who works as a fixer in the Rainbow Kingdom. She takes three magical enablers called “Wishes” on her adventures, and has a feline friend named Bartleby. “We use the word ‘Wishes,’ but really what they are is a proxy for her will,” said Sandoval, “empowering her to problem solve and get through the adventure.”

“The world [of the Rainbow Kingdom] is alive,” said Borkson to artnet. “If we can teach little kids that the world and the ocean is a character, like it’s their grandfather and grandmother, that these ideas exist in nature, then maybe we can make this vision for an idealistic future society where babies grow up thinking like this. It’s a beautiful seed inside the brain, but it’s also fully inside of our work—making animism accessible, and pushing the idea of love.”

The 10-episode first season is slated to debut in the first half of 2017, says Bill Schultz of Home Plate Entertainment, the production company helping FriendsWithYou navigate the TV industry. A second season will arrive later that year. Each episode clocks in at 22 minutes.