Cool Hunting

Four years, three painstakingly-detailed sets, 28 sassy characters, a head-shaking 10,000 photos later and Terpins Greco, the 40-member Brazilian team responsible for producing Battle: The Vinyl War, is finally seeing the juicy fruits of their labor. This month and next their stop-motion animation will be shown on Brazil's Cartoon Network channel in a four-part weekly series.

The shorts, which clock in at a brief five minutes each, follow the story of a vinyl shakedown between two DJs set in the favelas of São Paulo. Though all fictional, it's the classic story of the established versus the newcomer. DJ Black Jahmantha, a man who needs no introduction, faces DJ Air, a new up-and-comer, while DJ Thiade oversees the battle. Staying true to real life scenes found in Brazilian street and hip-hop culture, famous underground hip-hop DJs King and Cia were recruited to be the voices and music behind the main characters and Thiade got to cameo as himself.

The successive shorts, which began last Friday, 21 September 2007, will air over the next few Fridays at midnight on the Brazilian cable network. The rest of us will have to wait for their plans to expand the broadcast to all of Latin America and eventually land in the U.S. at a future undetermined date. For now, check out the trailer here.