Not many companies can say they won an Academy Award with their first film. But Lion Forge Animation’s Carl Reed and David Steward II, who formed the U.S.’s only Black-owned animation studio last year to address a lack of representation in the genre, took home the hardware in February for the studio’s involvement in animated short “Hair Love.”

Reed, a former animator, is president of the company and chief creative officer of St. Louis-based parent media firm Polarity. Steward, whose background is in marketing and finance, is CEO of Polarity, the owner› of Lion Forge Comics, which the two men founded in 2011.

The Oscar was only the start for Lion Forge Animation. HBO Max just picked up the 12-part TV series “Young Love,” a spinoff of “Hair Love,” from director Matthew Cherry, which Reed and Steward will executive produce alongside Cherry and animation vet Carl Jones.
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