This is a story, which takes place in the underground layer, full of enchantment and playful designs with bright colours. Onnie The Witch is the protagonist character of the story. Onnie is someone who is born of African descent and who was raised by a handful of powerful witches in New Orleans. She should be someone obsessed with making magic spells and putting curses on folks. Maybe she should be someone riding brooms in the night while talking to cats and the dead? For some apparent reason, this witch is obsessed with making magical soup.
In the animated short film, Onnie is prancing and dancing on her way down a long corridor towards a cave entrance. As soon as the witch gets there, she is distracted by a fly gliding into the scene in front of her. She swings her big ladle in front of it, and the fly decides to disappear. Everything seems well, so she proceeds to go to the big cauldron filled with a green substance over a big fire. I’m guessing this is the first introduction to her magical soup. Onnie smiles and begins to stir her magical soup with her big ladle. In the scene, I could tell she was very pleased and content.
When the witch finally starts to relax and begins to move in some dancing motion, while stirring her soup, all of a sudden, a variety of insects start flying on the screen and bothering her while she’s cooking her soup. Onnie was so irritated that she began to get angry and swing her ladle right into the air. When the movie goes off, you can hear Onnie screaming out the titular words more than once “Keep the bugs out of my soup!!!”
The film animation ends with some cool graphics along with a spider coming down on the web trying to get into Onnie’s soup. She wasn’t having it, so she smashed the spider with a flyswatter. While the closing credits appear on the screen, there were also some cool animations of Onnie being in different poses while making remarkable facial expressions. One of my negatives for the film is, I wish it was longer because I enjoy the concept, but I know it could be taken further. I also would like to see more characters that Onnie could’ve interacted with.
The concept was originally inspired by a video game idea. Tyrone Evans Clark, who some people know as Tyy Renaissance, is the creator of this animated production. Clark was the producer, writer, concept artist, director, and he also did the voice-over work for the character, Onnie. All the animation was created by one of the original Walt Disney animators, Rey Morano. This animated film also gathered some accolades, such as being an official selection for the 2022 Sidewalk Film Festival – Animated Short and an official selection for the 2022 Prague Independent Film Festival – Animated film.
My hat goes off to Clark for creating this beautiful animation that stars a cartoon who is African-American. There are not enough black and brown cartoons out there for children to look up to. We need more cartoons that display all colours in a positive way. I feel personally that Onnie The Witch is adorable, and I can see children falling for this character. It low-key gives me a classic introduction for example, a Mickey Mouse character or somebody from his universe.