The Chicken Wing Ninjas and Bizmo the Cleaning Ninja Troll concepts were developed over 20 years of my training and teaching as a professional martial artist (a formal study of human nature, conflict and fighting), combined with my passion and lifetime of exploration in the visual arts.
Integrity
Laziness / Lazy
It is not uncommon for a parent to seek guidance or support to help their child cope with issues of bullying, social stress, anger, self-control, and belligerence as though they are something to be solved or avoided, rather than elementary features of being a person. Avoidance, or pressure to try and ‘fix’ someone only exacerbates the conflict within, and leads to a poor ability to manage issues as they arise later in life.
Respect
Cruelty
As a martial arts teacher, I spent many years struggling to deliver on various parents’ expectations of martial arts by teaching children about fighting in the context that they first recognize it (physically). I also had to balance maintaining the student’s attention and interest. I came to the realization that this existing process was more indicative of training a soldier for battle than it was teaching a child life skills and helping them build a strong foundation. It is here that I asked the first question: What would the ‘art’ of fighting look like before the recognizable physical features of it emerge?
Compassion
Jealousy
Forms of conflict and fighting that we immediately recognize are features of the ‘art’ like sound is to music or paint to canvas. It is through the experience of the art of fighting that we discover the strengths in ourselves to overcome conflict and ‘messy situations’ as we grow up. These features of an individual require guidance to refine, develop, understand and manage. This is something that can emerge through experience as children explore the world, and can be facilitated through artistic storytelling, creating engagement between kids and their parents or teachers to explore the art of themselves.
Greed
Non-Virtue
This lead me to creating a story theme and the following characters: Bizmo the cleaning ninja troll who cleans up after the Chicken Wing Ninjas, who are a group of antagonists who make a mess of things using their ‘problem sauces’ such as “Bully Sauce”, “Angry Sauce” and so on.
Honesty
Virtue
The cartoon-like characters have become an artistic vehicle through which the complex concepts of ‘fighting’ are fun and yet allow each child to refine an understanding of them at their own pace.
