These Cartoons Are No Laughing Matter

A young boy watches as cigarette smoke turns his father to ashes. The youngster picks up the cigarette, contemplates it for a moment, then tosses it over his shoulder, having learned a lesson about the consequences of smoking.

That scenario is one of 11 depicted in a series of cartoons created this week by 100 students from six intermediate and high schools as part of a Santa Ana Unified School District anti-tobacco program.

In the coming months, the 30-second public service announcements are expected to air on cable Channel 55 and possibly in movie theaters and on other local TV stations.

The project is funded by a $9,000 grant from the California Department of Education’s Healthy Kids program, which has three goals: to teach students cartooning skills, inform them of the dangers of tobacco and share their knowledge and creativity with the public.

“Within the space of that [30-second] animation, two to three people are going to die” of tobacco-related causes, said Nigel Zeid, associate director of AnimAction.

The animation company, based in Santa Monica, contracts with schools worldwide to produce spots on topics ranging from tobacco to AIDS.

“When you’re that age,” said Zeid, surveying the students, “you think nothing can hurt you.”

The students, who took time out of their spring break to create the cartoons, worked most of the day Monday and Tuesday in the Valley High School cafeteria.

Working in small groups, they wrote stories, then illustrated them. For each 30-second cartoon, the students had to draw, trace and color about 300 pages.

AnimAction instructors supervised the students and provided them with supplies, including workbooks with tips on how to draw cartoons.

The shorts do not have dialogue but run with music, a title and final caption. All the shorts will be in English, and some will also include Spanish, Vietnamese and Khmer titles and captions, Zeid said.

Many of the students said they participated in the project to pick up new drawing techniques.

What they learned was much more than that.

“It’s hard,” Century High School student George Barajas, 16, said of cartooning. “It’s a lot of work just for a moment.”