From the drawing board of Brazilian cartoonist/animator/filmmaker Mauricio de Sousa, over 200 cartoon characters for kids have come to life, led by the signature group, Monica’s Gang. Mauricio, founder and CEO of Mauricio de Sousa Productions, the fourth largest art studio in the world, leads a team of over 150 artists at the giant comics enterprise to turn out a steady stream of creative artwork for publishing, animation, licensing, theme parks, live character shows, a Web site, promotions and cultural campaigns.

But the origin of Mauricio’s accomplishments goes back to his childhood dreams. Born in Santa Izabel, a small town outside of São Paulo, the son of parents who were both artists, Mauricio loved to write and draw from early on. As a young man, he moved to the big city and started out in journalism as a police reporter for the “Folha de São Paulo” newspaper. But his dream was to create comics. In 1959, the newspaper ran his first comic strip, starring a little blue pup named Blu. It marked the starting point for a highly successful international career that continues to expand in Brazil and around the globe.

With the syndication of his early comic strips, Mauricio left journalism to start his career as artist/cartoonist, opening his own studio and creating scores of cartoon characters -- Chuck Billy ‘n’ Folks, Horacio’s World, Tina and Pals, Lionel’s Kingdom, Bug-a-Booo, the Cavern Clan and many more. But always in the lead are the Monica’s Gang characters, a bunch of six- and seven-year-olds, each with a unique personality, who have fun doing what kids everywhere like to do. At the heart of the plots is the eternal rivalry between girls and boys to be the leader of the gang. With Monica, Jimmy Five, Maggy and Smudge the result is all kinds of funny, lively, action-filled stories. But always in the spotlight is Monica herself, the undisputed star of the whole delightful gang.

In publishing, Mauricio’s comics have been among the top-selling children’s titles in Brazil for many years. With ONE BILLION comic books sold, plus hardcover storybooks, activity books, giant and mini comic books, sticker albums, 3-D books and CD-ROMs, Monica’s Gang publications represent 70% of the children’s market in Brazil. The fact that Mauricio’s work has been translated into dozens of languages in over 50 countries attests to the international appeal of the stories and the characters, with interest in it increasing steadily worldwide.

In animation, Mauricio, the pioneer producer of feature-length animated films in Brazil, opened his own studio to put the simple, direct language of his “kids” on the screen. His full-animation cartoon series based on the concept of Comics-in-Action contains to date 600 minutes of cartoons of various lengths, and growing.

In the children’s licensing market in Brazil, Monica’s Gang is tops thanks to the success of Mauricio’s entire enterprise and its positive impact on consumer products. Over 100 industries currently license Mauricio de Sousa’s properties for more than 3,500 consumer products - everything from toys to apparel and accessories, household goods, school-related items, food products, games, sports equipment and CD-ROMs. And all of the artwork for packaging, sales campaigns and TV commercials for the licensed products is created and produced right in the MSP studios. Many of the Monica’s Gang products are exported to over 90 countries.

After publishing, animation and licensing, Mauricio opened the first indoor theme park in Latin America, third largest of its kind in the world, with a climatized area of 100,000 square feet in one of São Paulo’s largest shopping malls. Monica’s Park is built around a new concept for indoor parks, with child-powered attractions designed to provide big-city children something of the freedom and enjoyment of a big backyard.

Another area of entertainment where the hi-jinks of the Monica’s Gang characters bring joy to kids is their live onstage performances in original plays and musicals and at festivals, conventions and parades.

The solid popularity of Mauricio’s colorful cast is also reflected in the Monica’s Gang free, bi-lingual web site. With over 10,000 pages of comics, greeting cards, games, stories by Mauricio and highlights of activities and events, the site gets over 30 million page views a month and has been voted the top children’s site in Brazil for nine years in a row.

To take art and culture to kids of all ages, Mauricio created dozens of paintings featuring his characters in scenes that recall well-known works by great masters. Welcomed by important museums in Brazil, the Monica’s Gang Art Expo displays a print of the original masterpiece beside each of Mauricio’s paintings. An outstanding success, the Expo has been visited so far by over 900,000 people, most of them children who had never been in the museum before.

Mauricio’s artistic talent and unique achievements have brought him important recognition from around the world, including the prized Yellow Kid trophy, the international ‘Oscar’ for cartoonists, and an honorary doctorate of public service from La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for his social action projects starring the Monica’s Gang characters.

In Brazil, Mauricio was honored by the president with the important Human Rights medal and the “Diploma of Merit for the Valorization of Life” for his contributions to public service. And from the Brazilian postal service, four separate series of stamps featuring the Monica’s Gang characters were issued for the United Nations Summit on the Environment held in Rio de Janeiro, the 150th anniversary of the first Brazilian stamp, Children and Citizenship, and the Olympic Games.

Using Monica’s strength to draw attention to important messages, Mauricio has produced a large collection of “Comics for a Cause”-- stories that both entertain and teach -- with more than 70 million of the magazines distributed free of charge. These public service campaigns focus on topics such as health and hygiene, the dangers of smoking and drugs, clean water, safety, the environment, and also UNICEF’s Statutes of the Rights of Children and Adolescents.

For the 100th anniversary of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the United Nations World Health Organization, Mauricio was honored as a “Champion of Health in the Americas” for his longtime collaboration with PAHO. He began as a delegate to PAHO’s “Communicating for Health Programming,” and later started creating campaigns such as Healthy Environment for Children, Healthy Motherhood; Clean Water; Stop Smoking Around Children; a “Stay Safe From...” series that includes The Sun, Dengue Fever, Floods, and Dehydration; and “No Tobacco Day” with Monica in the starring role.

And as a man of many talents, cartoonist/artist Mauricio also has some inventions to his name, among them systems of Virtual 3D without glasses and TV with aromas. And two hardcover books of real stories, “Toons to Tales,” that unlike his comics contain more words than pictures, with interesting stories about his life, his career and his message.

Mauricio’s message of joy, which comes from the sensitivity of an artist who trusts in the future and in people beyond all social, ideological or geographical barriers, is intended for the most demanding public in the world: children.