Johnny Sad Boy

During the second week of the Jamaica animation workshop in 1991, the small group of participants produced a 50-second spot in the form of a pencil test. The spot was about child abuse and its goal was to draw attention to this sometimes hidden problem. The spot, Johnny Sad Boy, which could take place in any neighborhood in the West Indies, shows a very sad and depressed young boy walking along the street. He is thinking about all of the bad things he goes through at home, where he is beaten and ill-treated. As he walks, he bumps into a woman on the street. The woman initially raises her arm as if to hit him, but she actually reaches out and gently pats him on the head. Johnny is elated because he realizes that not everybody wants to hit children.

Johnny Sad Boy or Child Abuse as it was originally titled, was taken from the pencil test stage and completed at two additional training workshops held in Barbados. At the first of these workshops, Disney Feature Animation collaborated by sending their top ink and paint artist to conduct the training. It was during this week that the pencil test was transferred to animated cels and painted in full-color. At the last of the workshops, the head of Disney's training program, Frank Gladstone, was on hand to show the group how to use the camera and film the 1-minute feature.

The completed Johnny Sad Boy was screened on television throughout nineteen countries in the Caribbean on UNICEF International Children's Day of Broadcasting in 1993. It has since been shown regularly in the region as a public service announcement. The character of Johnny Sad Boy has also been used on print materials and products to publicize Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which deals with abuse. The image of Johnny Sad-Boy and the animated spot is now scheduled to be used in more comprehensive campaigns to publicize the Convention in St. Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad and Guyana.

[upper level | home]