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A picture is worth a thousand words. A simple animation depicting a clear anti-drugs message would not only say a million words, but could strike right into the hearts and minds of people from all age groups. Thus, using animation as a campaign media was envisaged by the National Anti-Drugs Agency (NADA).
It all started when in December 2005, NADA participated in a 10-day Toy Education Fair at the Mines Exposition Centre. NADA's booth was among the toy and educational section as well as multimedia institutions. At the booth, NADA distributed its home-made jigsaw puzzles with anti-drugs messages to families who turned up at the fair in droves. They enjoyed piecing together the puzzles and learning about the drug messages.
A young man showed up with his dad. After watching NADA's television spots, he asked if NADA would be interested in producing an animation series to complement its campaigns. NADA then provided Khariul and his dad with the contents regarding the ills of drug abuse.
By January 2006, six series were ready for preview. Khairul, the producer, touched up his childhood drawings while his friend Firdaus, who works in a multimedia company, helped to animate them. His sister, Nur Medina, helped with the inlay design. His friend Azhar composed the music.
For the preview, the audience was composed of adults, mostly civil servants. Olivia Sylvia Inciong, UNODC project coordinator for the "Promotion of Public Awareness on the Dangers Against of Drug Abuse," noted that the audiences for the preview were not the intended audiences of the animation series and suggested running pretests on the ground, and helped out by fine tun
ing the pretesting instrument. NADA then tested the animation series among public university students, school kids, and young working adults. The pre-test results were very encouraging.
The same animation series were also shown to participants of the Media Training held in April 2006, under the same UNODC regional project. The young media practitioners deemed the series very effective. After a few more pre-tests, slight adjustments were made. NADA intends to show the series over television stations if the channel owners would not charge any airtime. Its producers have also given permission for other ASEAN countries to use the series with local language text translation.
The Anti-Drugs Desk from the Ministry of Education who also attended the Media Training agreed to distribute the animation for use by all Malaysian schools.
