An image from Gideon Baws and Chris Harding's PSST!3 contribution, "Godel ????? Film School".

Collaborative animation film series PSST!3 will touch down in New York and London this week, with an exhaustive program of 17 shorts inspired by the Surrealist "Exquisite Corpse" storytelling technique.

Conceived by New York-based freelance motion graphics artist Bran Dougherty-Johnson in 2006 as an escapist outlet for animators and mograph artists toiling away in the worlds of advertising and broadcast design, PSST! Pass It On gives directors a chance to flex their creative muscles with few restraints.

The call for entries for PSST!3 attracted 175 artists, including David Shrigley, Lorenzo Fonda, Radical Friend, PepperMelon, David OReilly, Fons Schiedon, Jun Seo Hahm, Petpunk, Joey Garfield and Niko Stumpo.

Each film is created in three parts. Dougherty-Johnson uses a random number generator to put artists in groups of three and then uses the "Exquisite Corpse" collaborative storytelling technique to generate the narrative. The first filmmaker starts the story and then passes it on to another director. The resulting films are as chaotic as they are colorful - precisely the result Dougherty-Johnson hopes for.

"I think there's an interest in following a process and allowing the process to dictate the results," he says. "Especially in animation, where you plan the whole thing and then try to achieve it. This randomization gives you that element of chance that you would have on a live action shoot."

Liberating animators from their regimented, meticulously-planned workaday worlds is ultimately the goal of PSST! Pass It On. "We can lean on each other's shoulders and work together, we don't have to finish the process - just throw out a sketch," he says. "Exquisite Corpse randomizes the process so it actually makes everything less coherent."

PSST!3 screens in at the Galapagos Art Space in New York City on March 25 and at the Bodhi Gallery in London on March 26. For full details and more screening dates, visit psstpassiton.com.