Sminky fights for the girls

Cork's best known animator, Jason Sullivan of 'Sminky Shorts' fame has put his animation skills to very good use and has designed a promotional video for Breakthrough Cancer Research in a new campaign called 'Fight For The Girls'. The idea behind the video campaign is to try and get men on board and make them aware of breast cancer and already it has received over 25,000 hits on YouTube having been only uploaded on Tuesday.

"I was approached a few weeks ago by Hopkins Communications who were representing Breakthrough Cancer Research and they were looking to do something different for the launch of their new campaign. They gave me a rough idea of what they were looking for and the key was to aim it at male viewers. They were the first charity to come to me and I was honoured to be asked to be honest," said Jason who also goes by his alias Andrew James.

"It took me a couple of days to make it and the style of it is different to my other shorts so it is a unique piece. I did the voices as well and sent them through some samples and tweaked it a bit before I submitted the final cut and I was thrilled that Breakthrough Cancer Research loved it. It tied in exactly with their angle of getting men involved in the awareness of breast cancer."

In the meantime Jason is being flooded with interest from all types of companies who are looking for him to come up with animation ideas for their products, but the CIT multimedia student is determined to make the right move before finalising anything and has admitted he has a lot of stuff in the pipeline. He has promised a new 'Sminky Short' in the next few weeks and is currently working on it at the moment. Jason has also recently been signed up by the prestigious London Agency, United Agents.

The comments posted online in response to his video for breast cancer awareness have been mainly positive and Jason was glad that women who had suffered breast cancer were supportive of it. For the month of October this campaign is encouraging men and women all over Ireland to join the fight against womens' cancer during Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the 'Fight For The Girls' campaign calls on men to pledge their support for the girls in their lives and also raise much needed funds for research into new treatments which affects thousands in Ireland each year. They have even come up with novel ideas like 'Sponsor your man to do the chores you never do.'

To view Jason's video see http://bit.ly/Vuq6sH, and to support 'The Fight For The Girls' campaign see www.breakthroughcancerresearch.ie