SoCAM | Create International Taiwan 台灣國際創意媒體

The SCHOOL of CARTOONING and ANIMATION for MISSIONS

Create International Taiwan is no longer running the School of Cartooning and Animation for Missions. Please consider doing our AniMissions school or the Frontier Comics Seminar instead.

The School of Cartooning and Animation for Missions (SoCAM) is a twenty-four week, second-level YWAM school, accredited with the University of the Nations (course code: CMC261/262). In many cultures, and especially within those in the 10/40 window, people prefer to receive information through pictures. Cartoons and animation can be powerful tools, particularly in Asia where people line up at stores to buy the latest comic book.

About Us

Course Content

During the twelve-week lecture phase, guest speakers who are experts in their fields will provide hands-on training in a variety of topics, while students grow in their relationship with God and use media to reach out to the local community.

Courses include:

Culture-Specific Media Strategy
Story Development
Human Figure Drawing
Comics and Cartooning
Manga Techniques
Comic Strip Writing
Digital Illustration
2D Animation Techniques
3D Graphics and Animation
Motion Graphics
Sound Design

Field Assignment

Also, 12 weeks of production will be integrated into the training, where students will be directly involved in the production of a cross-cultural animated short film that shares the good news with an unreached people group. This will include onsite field research, consultations with local missionaries, and hours of guided production at our studio in Taiwan.

Meet the Instructors

Dave Hudson

Create Int. Taiwan Director, SoCAM Leader

Dave graduated from California State University, Fullerton, with a BA in Art, and has been a professional illustrator for 30 years. He and his wife, Wendy, joined Create International in 2008, and pioneered the first SoCAM in Thailand, in 2010. Since 2002, Dave has taught computer graphics in YWAM schools all over the globe, including the School of Illustration, School of Design, and the School of Digital Communications. His style runs the gamut between realistic technical drawing and whimsical cartoons, in both traditional media and digital art. He has also directed four animated productions for unreached people groups in Asia.

Kyla Wiebe

Assistant School Leader

Kyla has always had a passion for art, and is especially thrilled about using art to serve God on the mission field. She hails from Manitoba, Canada, and completed her bachelor of Biblical studies at Millar College of the Bible in 2016. Kyla did her DTS and SoCAM in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2012. Her style is characteristically diverse, but she especially likes drawing the human figure and using Photoshop for digital painting. She started staffing the SoCAM in Taiwan in 2016, and lead the SoCAM in 2017 and 2018. She also staffed the Frontier Comics Seminar in 2019 and 2020.

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Andrew Garcia

Staff

Andrew hails from the upper peninsula of Michigan. He loves drawing animals and dinosaurs and has a gift for developing stories. He did his DTS in Scotland. He took the School of Cartooning and Animation for Missions in 2015 and staffed the school from 2016 to 2019.

Azumi Ryo

Japanese Manga Instructor

Azumi Ryō is a Japanese manga-ka who was born in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. Ryō’s largest works include the “Ring of the Nibelungs” and “Scarlet Sword,” both based on Scandinavian mythology and history. She says she tends to be drawn more toward the weaknesses in her characters than their heroic qualities. Ryō lives in Japan and continues to work as a manga-ka. She also enjoys investing in the lives of future manga artists by lecturing on manga part-time at a vocational school in Japan. She has also illustrated the last three books of the Manga Messiah series from NEXT Manga—Manga Mutiny, Manga Melech, and Manga Messengers.

Alwyn Ng

Adobe Animate Instructor

Alwyn is an artist from Singapore. He has a diploma in Digital Media and specializes in flash animation. It has been his dream to work in the animation industry, where he has been since 2008. He is currently working as a CG artist in Koei Tecmo Singapore, a Japanese game company, developing social games for the mobile platform. One day, he hopes to produce his own children's series.

Tod Polson

Animation Design Instructor

Tod Polson received both his BFA and MFA from The California Institute of the Arts (Cal/Arts)under scholarship from the Walt Disney Co. His student film, _Al Tudi Tuhak_, won many awards including the Student Oscar. Between degrees, Tod apprenticed under the Oscar winning team of Chuck Jones, and Maurice Noble. Tod has worked extensively as a director, designer, and teacher, helping develop a variety of projects all over the world. Some of these projects include the Emmy award-winning El Tigre for Nickelodeon, the Oscar-nominated feature The Secret of Kells, and the Golden Globe-nominated, The Book Of Life. His animation design book, The Noble Approach, Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation was published by Chronicle Books LLC. Currently, Tod is developing projects big and small from Thailand.