SS Media Productions seeks to put media cachet in the Flint area

FLINT TOWNSHIP, MI – The Flint area is known for many things.

The automotive industry, entertainment venues and museums.

What Flint isn’t exactly known for is being a media hub.

But at SS Media Productions, located at 1134 S Linden Road Suite 8 in Flint Township, the man behind the super-popular YouTube channel “Karazah Channel” has garnered 380,000 subscribers and over 150 million views.

The Karazah Channel is an Arabic 3D animated children’s show produced by Flushing resident Obai Sukar.

SS Media Productions’ services range from 3D animation and audio design to bilingual voiceovers and visual effects editing.

Sukar, 39, has worked in the animation industry for over 20 years, which started when he started creating his own cartoons. Over the years, Sukar has completed work for several international companies, which have won numerous awards.

“When people visit my studio, they say it was refreshing to find something like this in Flint,” Sukar said. “But when they see the quality of my work, they say I should be in Hollywood.”

Sukar lived in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as a child and is said to have taken to dismantling his father’s stereo. He knew music was the career path he would follow.

His grandfather, Mohamed, recited the Quran inside a recording studio, and Sukar was usually there with him. He eventually started helping produce the sessions.

A 2005 sound engineering graduate from an LA recording school, Sukar returned to Syria in 2006 and remained there until 2012. But when the war in Syria broke out, he fled the country and installed in the Flint area in 2014.

Sukar spent a decade working as a sound engineer for Spacetoon, one of the most popular children’s TV channels in the Middle East. Spacetoon opened a department called “Tiger Productions” and dubbed Sukar to do the audio design, which led to him becoming the sound director.

In 2016, he was part of a short film that won the Student Academy Award at the Academy of Motion Pictures.

Sukar recently asked a music artist from Los Angeles to work with him rather than someone from Los Angeles because Sukar’s media company is more affordable.

Karazah Channel, established in 2016, is a 3D animated YouTube show that showcases the Arabic language in a fun and engaging way. It was triggered because Sukar knows animation, understands how media works with YouTube algorithms.

“I said why not do something that’s just bigger than me doing something for a living,” Sukar said. “I struggle with my kids learning Arabic and other people too.”

Every week there is a new video on Karazah Channel, and Sukar recently launched an English language channel which is aided by several songwriters and hosts.

An example of Sukar’s work

Sukar’s talents have attracted local music artists looking for his business, and a major global artist he has worked with in the past is Rasha Rizk, a Syrian singer-songwriter with 920,000 Instagram followers.

Sukar has also worked with Bu Kolthoum, a Syrian rapper with over 150,000 Instagram followers and Lena Chamamyan, a Syrian-Armenian singer with nearly 130,000 Instagram followers.

Although Flint is a small town, Sukar believes in the talent that exists within the community. It is his mission to find artists and help them grow.

“I helped so many artists back when they were signing recording deals with bigger production companies,” he said. “I know how to make stars.”

To view the SS Media Productions website, visit here.

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