Cartoon creator's new offering

By K. Kannan

NEW DELHI, FEB. 18. For Mo Willems, creator of Nickledeon's ``The Off-Beats'' and Sesame Street's ``Suzie Kabloozie'' cartoons, animation is the greatest democratic form of entertainment. Humour, he says, is more powerful than drama as people generally do not like to be lectured.

This month, Cartoon Network has started premiering ``Sheep in the Big City'', the first full-length animated series created by this vivacious animator, who makes cartoons because ``it is fun to make them''. ``Sheep in the Big City is a silly show for pure entertainment. If there is any theme, it is getting alienated in a big city,'' he says.

Mo, who grew up on Church Jones, Charlie Chaplin and Picasso, says ``Sheep in the Big City'' has a lot of language humour. ``Making an animation series like this is a very involved process. Nearly 30,000 line drawings are converted into animation in each episode,'' he informs.

Young urban professionals, he says, will relate to the many situations the sheep get into. ``From falling in love, dealing with pitfalls of modern technology, to vanity and sudden fame, the series is sure to engage yuppies in a humorous tale of city dwelling.''

Mo finds fulfillment in making animation films as it allows him to create a fantasy world that at the same time can expose a certain amount of human frailty.``While making such films, we, animators, however, try and keep it fun as it should be a pleasurable experience watching them,'' he says.

Having made more than 70 short films thus far, Mo informs that his style is based on a studio that was around in the 1950's in the U.S. called the UPA. ``Though I did go to a film school to learn animation, most of the skills can be acquired only by practice,'' he says.

What does it take to be a good animator? ``Fantasy, a sense of fun, breaking the rules of graffiti and being true to yourself,'' he says, adding, ``the key is to love drawing and to draw every day''.

Mo says people, as a rule, do not like to be told what they should or should not do. However, they do like to narrate their experiences and many times, a story told humorously does just that. ``Laughing is nothing but sharing an experience''.

As for creativity, Mo says: ``It is a willingness to get embarrassed. It is a lack of shame, taking risks, saying silly things, doing silly things, experimenting.... The first person who made a drawing would not have done so if he thought how others would react to him.''

Winner of numerous awards including three Emmy awards as a writer for Sesame artist, Mo also makes wire sculptures and ceramics with his father, a potter. ``I am happy making animation films as many of the characters I created earlier have become a part of the people's memory. I was overjoyed when someone recently told me that he had named his twins after two of the central characters in The Off-Beats.''

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