My New Project! | The Adventures of Ben Born Again & Yellow Dog
I don’t know if you know my story or not, but my mother was married and divorced seven times. She was a raging alcoholic, so I was really lonely as a kid. Drawing and art played a huge role in my development—it was a place for me to escape to! It helped me get away from the crazy life that was happening around me and to connect with something bigger than myself and my circumstances. That’s why I’m excited to announce a new project that’s really close to my heart. It’s an animated program called The Adventures of Ben Born Again & Yellow Dog.
The Making of Ben Born Again
I just opened this portfolio that’s been sitting in my closet forever, and it contained a bunch of my old artwork that I haven’t seen for years. In fact, I even wondered if I had lost it. When I look at these old pieces of art, it’s like an explosion of memories. 1964 was one of my first drawings; I made a Christmas card for my mother saying, “We wish you a merry Christmas.” This was around the time I started corresponding with Charles Schulz, and I was amazed he wrote me back! My sole goal in life up to that point was to be a professional cartoonist. It’s all I wanted to do.
So, now I’m a brand new believer and I’m in my art class and the teacher says the assignment for the month is to make a cartoon strip. Well, I did cartoon strips all the time! But now I was a believer, so I thought, “Is there a way to express my faith through artwork?” So I came up with this idea to do a cartoon strip called “Living Water.”
This was actually my first venture into large scale communication of my faith. Ultimately, over a million of these little books went all around the world. I was realizing that God could use this artwork that I’d worked on my whole life to tell a bigger story.
I developed a character in the “Living Water” tract, and this character eventually became a little guy named Ben Born Again. Ben has blonde hair and is probably a caricature of me. I decided to tell my stories through him.
I’m really excited about this. It took a lot longer than I thought, but it was a lot of fun. I hope that when people see this animation, it isn’t just kids that will like it, but people of all ages. I want to tell these little stories, but they have a heavenly meaning. I want to reach people with humor, but then have something bigger to say.
Through The Adventures of Ben Born Again & Yellow Dog, we feel like we can take animation and sort of turn it on its head with something not seen before: an animated cartoon that has a wholesome, good, family oriented message—but even more, the message of the gospel.
Stay tuned for more!
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Learn more about Pastor Greg Laurie
