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That is precisely what happened with "Undercover Brother," a story about an Afro-wearing urban spy that went from online cartoon to big-screen movie, receiving critical approval along the way. Released over the summer, it cost $35 million to make and took in $38 million at the box office.

That is a modest success for the company, but Mr. Jenkinson and Damon Lee, who is also African-American, say they are not discouraged. They have three other projects in development at major studios.

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They said they were also in discussions with other Web sites that are seeking original short films. That is the type of business opportunity that many of their competitors, less successful in keeping costs and overhead low, did not survive to take advantage of.

"It's great," Mr. Lee said, surveying the online landscape that appears wide open to Urban Entertainment. "It's great being the last man standing, and African-American."

Pushing Digital Design's Limits

It wasn't as if Evette Vargas and Carlos Arriaga weren't making a good living in New York. They created and operated a small but successful graphics company from their Greenwich Village loft apartment for a few years in the late 1990's.

But they wanted more, especially Ms. Vargas, who as a graduate of New York University's undergraduate film program, wanted to push her mastery of digital graphics and filmmaking much further. "I wanted to tell stories," she said. She and Mr. Arriaga said they became seized with a desire to apply their talents and time to something beyond retouching photographs and polishing advertising campaigns. They wanted to make entertainment.

In 1998, Ms. Vargas and Mr. Arriaga, both New York-born and of Puerto Rican descent, closed their company, packed up and headed for Los Angeles in search of a new creative life. Here the couple, now married, created Digital-Reign, a bustling Web site design house and content developer that seems to have more branches than an olive tree.

Digital-Reign is an example of an emerging class of entertainment-oriented companies that use cutting-edge digital technologies to churn out anything from high-quality animation to music videos.

One project that helped Ms. Vargas and Mr. Arriaga distinguish their work from more pedestrian Web design is a site that Digital-Reign did for Madonna. Thousands of minutes of songs and videos, hundreds of photographs and reams of text are categorized and displayed in a cinematic style that many say pushes the boundaries of what an artist site can do.

Ms. Vargas and Mr. Arriga have also turned to Flash animation to create their own concepts for fully animated music videos for the Baha Men and Wu-Tang Clan. Digital-Reign designs company logos and is developing digital tools to enhance communications and productivity for business Intranets.

Like most of the employees of their 10-person company, Ms. Vargas and Mr. Arriaga work from home. "The technology makes all of that possible," said Mr. Arriaga, 42, the company's art director and manager. He set up the company's workstations and server in the three-office sprawl of desks, computers and art objects where the couple work. He learned some of his graphics and electronics skills on the job and taught himself the rest.

Ms. Vargas, who says she prefers to give her age as "30-something," is driven and charming and does most of the talking. They both say that over the years of living and working together, their creative styles have melded especially well in Los Angeles.

"It was a great move," Ms. Vargas, chief executive and creative director of the company, said about replanting their business roots in California. "It was the right move. We wanted to be close to the entertainment industry. We wanted to be able to play like the big boys."