Producer Firdaus Kharas of Ottawa’s Chocolate Moose Media has helped guide other long-form production talents out of Canada, South Africa and India on a series of 2D-animated PSAs aimed at AIDS awareness.

With a titular reference to the Chevy Chase flick, ‘The Three Amigos’ features three animated talking condoms in comedy sketches. The pieces may be funny, but their intent is deadly serious – to educate viewers on how to stop the spread of the killer disease.

The project was conceived and written in South Africa by producer Brent Quinn of Quintet Productions. Then Kharas, whose executive producing credits include Daft Planet and Untalkative Bunny, acted as script supervisor. Ottawa’s Funbag Animation Studios provided character design, led by Gordon Coulthart and Brent McNeil, while divisions of Halifax’s Helix Animation performed layout, key animation, as well as digital paint and compositing. Backgrounds and animation were then handled in India, while Toronto’s Loopmedia designed logos for the campaign.

The hand-drawn spots target teenagers and young adults – as well as anyone with multiple sexual partners – promoting safe sex through rubber characters Shaft, Dick and Stretch. The 20-PSA series offers spots in lengths of 15, 20, 30 and 60 seconds. They are intended for international broadcast, and with minimal dialogue, specific countries can either run the original English dialogue track or overdub in their local language using domestic talent.

The project has the distinction of having been endorsed at the proposal stage by Desmond Tutu. In a February 2003 letter from the Cape Town archbishop, obtained by Playback, Tutu writes, ‘Your approach of showing three animated condoms… is well conceived to appeal to a broad cross-section of people.’

The cartoons were launched recently at Sithengi, Cape Town’s international film and TV market. South African broadcaster SABC1 debuted the spots on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, as did MTV Canada. Kharas says he got the tape to MTV just two days prior, and the net must have been impressed, because it ended up running three of the PSAs 37 times throughout the day.

Tutu has written a second letter to broadcasters, particularly in Africa, holding up MTV’s example and urging TV stations to give the spots similar play. Interested broadcasters can find out about ordering the tape at www.thethreeamigos.org.

-www.kharas.ca

-www.funbag.com

-www.helixanimation.com

-www.loopmedia.com