'BUGTIME ADVENTURES' Bible cartoons are all the buzz around the world

In Korea, marketers are selling products with the characters on them.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MILWAUKEE -- Antoni, an ant living in ancient Egypt, faces a hard choice in his life. A cockroach named Roderick has humiliated him at the annual bug picnic, and Antoni plans revenge. Should the ant catapult slime onto the low-down roach -- or forgive him?
Meanwhile, Joseph -- governor of Egypt in the world of humans around Antoni -- is wrestling with similar emotions.
Those are scenes, and one of the themes, from a new Bible-based video series created by a West Allis, Wis., company that is generating an international buzz. Lightning Bug Flix uses animated insects such as Antoni and Roderick in its "Bugtime Adventures" series to convey Biblical stories and values.
The series won a 2005 Telly Award for creative excellence in video, and the 13-part series also attracted an impressive audience when Irish public television's RTE 2 network broadcast it this year on Saturday mornings, said Bruno John, chief executive officer of Lightning Bug Flix. Viewership averaged a 27 share among people ages 4 to 14, meaning that at the times the series was broadcast, 27 percent of children that age who were watching TV were tuned in to it, he said.
Shown in South Korea
In South Korea, the Christian Broadcasting System started broadcasting the series last month. KimsAnicomm -- the Korean partner that helped Lightning Bug Flix create, finance and produce the series -- reportedly has started marketing puzzles, bibs, visors, temporary tattoos and other products with the series' characters on them in Korea.
Monster Distributes, an international sales firm, has signed contracts for broadcasts of the series in Poland and Taiwan. The series is on satellite television in the United Kingdom, and DVD and VHS versions of one episode are being sold in Sweden, John said.
And last month, DVD and VHS versions of the series' first two stories -- "Blessing in Disguise: The Joseph Story" and "A Giant Problem: The David Story" -- have landed in Family Christian Stores nationwide, John said. A comic book version of the first story also is in stores.
The remaining 11 stories will be released to stores gradually over the next 18 months. If sales are good, production will begin on additional stories, he said.
Son of heir
"I describe it as cross-denominational and cross-cultural," said John, the son of the late Miller Brewing heir Harry John, adding that a Protestant and a Catholic Scripture scholar both provided advice. "It's bringing the stories of faith to an entertainment medium. It's not just a Sunday school representation of it. It's not just for the religious education markets. It's moving into a whole other area where kids want to be."
"We wanted not a captive audience, but one eager to watch our programming," he said. "We knew they would pick up values and lessons in an easier way. We've really set out to make it as entertaining as we could: with great stories, good characters and done in a quality way that matches what they are used to seeing on mainstream television."
Each video also includes on-screen word and memory games, plus an interview with an artist or voice actor.
There also is a Web site -- www.bugtime.com -- with interactive games, downloadable artwork for use as computer backgrounds, and line-drawings of characters that can be printed out for children to color.
Each "Bugtime" episode was hand-drawn and cost nearly $200,000, John said. The episodes tread on paths blazed by "VeggieTales," a video series in which animated vegetables bring Bible stories and values to life.
What children get is both a micro and a macro look at biblical times. While large, animated human characters live out Bible stories, an insect world at their feet named Buggelsville has different adventures that reinforce the values in the Bible lessons.
Good responses
Such themes have resonated well with organizations that aim to promote quality family and children's entertainment. Various episodes have gotten a 2005 Angel Award from Excellence in Media, an Award of Excellence from the Film Advisory Board, and seals of approval from The Dove Foundation.
Animation for nearly all of the series' episodes was done in Seoul, South Korea, by Starburst Animation Studio.
The narrator for "Bugtime" is Willie Aames, an actor on the "Eight is Enough" television show and played an evangelical superhero man on "The Bibleman Adventures" video.