The Story

We were over at a friend’s house one day, and the father was showing us a new “invention” called a DVD! “It holds the same amount of video that a regular tape does, and it’s a lot smaller!” he said. I was fascinated. But even more fascinating was what he showed on it. As we watched, we saw a man building a home-made space ship so he could fly to the moon while his faithful dog watched in anticipation. It was a delightful episode in the Wallace and Gromit shows! “So that’s all made out of clay?” I asked. I was impressed.

A few years later, I was enjoying a favorite past-time: building clay figures. Taking our family’s hi-8 video camera, I clicked fast shots of my clay objects, moving them slightly between each take. When I watched the video later, I was amazed at the results! It just got better from there. I built little backdrops with crayons and cardboard, putting my clay men inside.

After awhile, I left off clay “movies” for awhile, and went back to my favorite toy of my younger years: LEGOs. I was high-tech by this time. Taking our digital video camera that had the ability to take still pictures, I took pictures of our LEGO guys, making a movie similar to my original clay animations. This time I was able to edit it in iMovie, adding voice-overs and other sound-effects. All in all, I thought it was pretty good! Well, it was a start at least...

After getting my feet wet in the 3d animation world, I started playing around with an open-source program called Blender. After working on a few projects, I put it aside for awhile. Then, in the fall of 2008, I saw Men O’ War, made by Isaac Botkin. I was impressed. This was LEGOs with better quality than I had even dreamed of! After seeing that, I decided that my next animation project would be a LEGO film.

After starting out on a feature film production, I soon saw the need to shorten my first attempt at animation. And so, after picking a story that I’ve enjoyed ever since I was about 6, I set my sights on a 15 minute dramatic short. With that goal in mind, I have plunged into learning animation with full force.

So that is the story behind this production, and I hope each one of you will be inspired to follow what you feel the Lord has called you to do. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, all that matters is trust in God and a willingness to learn. God bless!