VAN NUYS : Young Cartoonists Put Pens to Work Against Smoking

In a gym doubling as a studio, about 150 junior high students got a chance to doodle for a cause Thursday, creating 30-second video cartoons as part of the state’s anti-smoking campaign in schools.

On the first day of a two-day workshop, films with such titles as “The Breathless Club,” “The Smoking Cowboy and the Hacking Indian” and “Bambi: The Real Story” gradually came to life from the pens of students at Van Nuys Junior High--all pounding home the torments of tobacco. “They show you what can happen if you start smoking, what are the consequences,” said Alex Martin, 12.

According to the students’ imaginations, those consequences include being sent to hell, sucked into a TV set and choked by fumes from cigarette-smoking breakfast foods.

The workshop is one of about 60 being conducted this year in Los Angeles schools by AnimAction America Inc. Funded by the state’s $1-million Tobacco Use Prevention Education (TUPE) program, the Woodland Hills-based firm employs animators to guide students through a rudimentary cartoon-making process.

The Van Nuys students, who had been excused from regular classes, were divided into groups of 10 or 11, each making its own cartoon. Each group got a soundtrack of recorded music and the task of writing a story with an anti-smoking message. They then sketched each frame--360 are required for a 30-second film--onto storyboards and transferred them to a tracing-paper flip book.

The sequences will be shot Friday with a 16-millimeter stop-action camera. After dubbing with the soundtracks, the films will be screened for parents at an open house next month.

“It’s a very simple process . . . but it gets the job done,” said Mary Lou Basaraba, an AnimAction executive.

“It’s hard because you have to do a lot of drawings,” sighed Jorge Hernandez, 13.

As they toiled over their lurid tales, the young cartoonists said the workshop was a particularly effective way of conveying the dangers of smoking.

“It’s better than having some adult stand up and say, ‘Don’t smoke,’ ” said Amy Smilay, 13, co-creator of “The Smoking Cowboy,” in which the cowpoke offers the Indian a cigarette and ends up in hell for his pains.

“It’s good because kids always watch cartoons,” said Christina Lopez, 13, co-producer of “The Old Hag,” about a woman who is transformed into a beautiful princess after she quits smoking. “They don’t watch the news.”

Sam Portnoy, the school’s TUPE coordinator, said smoking was not a widespread problem on the campus. But, he added, “I know for a fact there are two smokers (in the workshop). This won’t convince them to stop smoking but it’s a first step. Maybe it will get them to think about things they haven’t thought about before.”