Andre Benjamin looks as if he might have just stepped out of a cartoon. With his brightly colored pants, his straw hat and whimsical smile, the 31-year-old hip-hop star, half of the duo Outkast, is wildly expressive.

It’s this kind of energy he has poured into hit songs like the smooth and danceable “The Way You Move.” And it’s of little surprise that his latest project outside Outkast is a musical animated series, “Class of 3000,” which premieres tonight on the Cartoon Network.

The show represents a bit of artistic freedom for him, taking away the pressures of having to match the million-selling CDs he and collaborator Big Boi make as Outkast.

“Anything I do from now on is extracurricular,” Benjamin, an Atlanta-born entertainer, says. “I’m glad to be in this place. I would hate to have to rack my brain to try and sell another 10 million albums. That’s a bad place to be.”

“Class” is his baby. He helped create it, has a hand in the scripts, is writing an original song for every episode and has a say-so in the look of the show. He even supplies the voice of character Sunny Bridges, an optimistic teacher of gifted students in Atlanta.

“This (cartoon) is sort of based on my childhood, growing up in Atlanta,” he says. “I wasn’t the coolest kid. I was quiet. I lived in the projects and went to a predominantly white school, but it also had Asian kids and Indians.

“All my friends were from all these different places.”

Benjamin wasn’t looking for a cartoon series when he got involved with “Class.” Producer Tom Lynch sold him on an idea to do a show about children. Benjamin wanted music incorporated.

“I knew I wanted the show to be built around music, and I knew for that to happen we had to have different instrument players,” he says.

So many of the “Class” gang has the look of instruments - the roundness of a drum or the thinness of a woodwind. (The show’s title is based on his Outkast stage name, Andre 3000, and is a tip of the hat to the animated students being his proteges.)

Sunny gives up his successful recording career to come back to his native Atlanta to be a teacher. With his guidance, his students navigate their way through the typical pains of growing up.

“He has this magical, excited voice when he wants to help kids,” says Benjamin, who isn’t married but has a son with ex-girlfriend Erykah Badu. “He is a lot like me.”

The character is based on an amalgamation of teachers he had in Atlanta, including his high school drama and art teachers.

“They had an influence on me. They’d say, ‘get out and make a change in your life.’ I was shy as a kid. I didn’t have brothers or sisters so I never had to interact with other people,” he says. “I lived in my own fantasy world.

“They kind of helped me break out of my shell by showing me where my talents were.”