A Horsey cartoon of Las Vegas, from the Death Valley piece

After decades as a newspaper cartoonist, David Horsey is trying out a new medium.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Hearst cartoonist has been experimenting with narrative film. Horsey signed on with MSNBC to create a series of short cartoon and photo films this spring. The History Channel funded the first round of shorts, and Horsey is currently seeking a funder for the next phase of the project.

Horsey, who pens cartoons for Seattlepi.com and Hearst papers around the country, first met with MSNBC and Hearst’s directors of new media last fall.

The group decided that Horsey would team up with freelance photographer Nancy LeVine to create a series of films based on a road trip. The History Channel wanted to sponsor the project and tie it into the work it had been doing to chronicle America.

As envisioned by LeVine and Horsey, the short films would capture a particular American place or journey with cartoons, photographs, and audio narration. They’d already experimented with the medium together through a film on a Washington road trip, and they wanted to expand the idea. The series was named “Escape Into America.”

For Horsey, the project seemed appealing because he’d never incorporated sound with his images. He thought the series would stretch his own abilities as a story teller.

“I’ve been doing editorial cartoons for a long time,” Horsey said. “It’s nice to try something entirely different.”

Horsey and LeVine traveled first to California. They knew of a woman working with youth in one of the roughest gang areas in Los Angeles. In her former life, she was an actress on the campy show Baywatch. Horsey and LeVine figured her story could be their first film.

En route, they discovered a conservative Orthodox synagogue in the middle of bohemian, artsy Venice Beach.  The pair ended up stopping to produce a film on the synagogue, figuring it was as unusual as the Baywatch beach beauty turned social activist.

“We were looking for people with stories you wouldn’t expect,” Horsey said.

The artists finished their journey with a film on traveling in Death Valley, another on an animal rescue shelter in Utah, and a piece on year-round residents of the Grand Canyon.

During the trip, Horsey drew cartoons and wrote the narrative, LeVine took photographs, and a production assistant did the audio and video work. Horsey said it was the first time he’d ever worked so closely with another artist. He needed to make sure LeVine’s photos worked with his story.

“I’m almost always alone writing or drawing,” Horsey said. “This forced me to be collaborative.”

“Escape Into America” ran on MSNBC in April, with a new video appearing each week. The films attracted 1 million page views total, with most of those views coming on the day the new film came out. Seattlepi.com then posted the series in May.

Horsey next wants to take the series to the space shuttle launch site in Florida and the oil spill disaster in the Gulf Coast. He’s pitching ideas to MSNBC, but the news organization needs to find a sponsor to replace The History Channel before giving Horsey the go ahead with the project.

“Escape Into America” is just one example of the need to be innovative and entrepreneurial in the ever changing media landscape. For veterans like Horsey, it’s both a challenge and an adventure.

Below, you can check out the pieces that have run from “Escape Into America” so far:

The Escape Begins
The Imperative of the Road
The Godmother of Hollywood
The Pooch Posse of Kanab
Sand, Sea and Shul
Living at the Edge