We designed the story of "Pete's Adventure" to be used to help children who have suffered trauma to cope by teaching them important lessons. Pete is separated from his family when his ice-flow falls into the sea. The story was originally presented on large story boards called "kamishibai" on back of which was printed the words in Mandarin. The storytellers would then interpret the story into the local dialect that was most familiar to the children.

"Papa, please play ice tag with me!"

Telling the story with Kamishibai

Before the camps we would train the storytellers how to express each characters voices and mannerisms. I would read the story in English and they would do their best to mimic in Chinese.

Training story tellers.

This summer we were able to put the story on disc so that the pictures could be projected up large for the children and some camps even had the kids act the story out.

Children act out the story.

To make "Pete's Adventure" into an animation we first had to make a screenplay out of the original story, construct a story board of each scene and shot, and build a 3D computer graphics model of Pete's world and all of the characters.

Pete's Papa

We also needed to write the new song, "I Am Not Alone", record voice actors, compose a score and find sound effects. 

A truly amazing group of people have brought their talents to this project and we are humbled by their dedication.

But Episode 1 is just the beginning. It will take ten episodes to tell the complete story and bring Pete back safely home again and we need your help.