Brighton's answer to South Park

KOD (Kids On Drugs), a subversive pop cartoon featuring two kids and a monster, is now heading for Hollywood.

Brighton cartoonist Dave Watson is the man behind KOD.

His animation has been selected to appear in the Green Reel Film Festival in Hollywood this weekend, alongside another of Dave's creations, Johnny Hash, a low-key country singer with a potent political message.

Now in its third year, the two-day event is a forum for progressive film-makers who gather to air their views on issues such as the environment, politics, racism, and corporate power.

Created on a shoe-string budget on a computer at his home off Lewes Road, Dave's cartoons have been making waves around the world.

Johnny Hash's anti-war song, We Don't Want Your Oil Wars Mr Bush, has had more than one million hits on the internet since Dave brought him to life last year.

He has been sent emails, some damning, some praising his work, from as far away as Australia.

The cartoonist did not even enter the festival, the organisers contacted him after hearing about his work.

From the age of four Dave was scribbling cartoons of teachers from the back of the class at his school in the Shankle, a deprived area of Belfast.

Dave, 33, who works as a freelance designer, is married to Lucy, 27, and has two children, Dylan, four, and Missy Mo, two.

The youngsters were the inspiration for KOD, which is about a brother and sister.

In The West is the Best, the cartoon showing at Green Reel, the little boy is determined to prove the West is best and will not listen to anyone else, locking his little sister in her bedroom for daring to suggest otherwise.

But as he flies through the air astride a missile, a song highlights certain aspects of Western culture, such as toxic waste, experiments on animals and deceitful adverts, which suggest it is perhaps not all it is cracked up to be.

Dave said: "Living with kids and growing up with kids I became aware of how they have to withstand a bombardment of messages - what they should eat, wear, do and think. West is the Best is a parody of that.

"The name Kids On Drugs comes from the idea kids are addicted to all this stuff they are force-fed. It's an analogy for consumer culture."

To see KOD and Johnny Hash, go to www.badverts.com or www.tinyflea.com. Go to www.greenreel.org for more information about the festival.