The Anticipated Gift

The Anticipated Gift from Grace Church on Vimeo.

Contrary to popular belief, I haven't been sitting on my thumbs not doing anything— in fact quite the contrary! Which is a good thing as I've been busy on shows such as Veggie Tales and Doc McStuffins and two picturebooks and story development of the 3D sculpted graphic novel that is the brain child of Disney modeling supervisor, Zack Petroc.

All of these projects will have updates on the site in the upcoming weeks. The first is the 2012 Christmas program for Grace Church in Bath, OH. It is a multimedia allegory that was written, executed, scored and animated in less than 3 weeks. While there are things I'd do differently now, given the short time frame that an unfamiliar creative team had to produce this story, I'd say God did a great deal of pulling us along to make it come out well.

I wish we had the live footage from the services, because what you can't see is the set design that was involved in the development of the story. Three screens in the shape of rolling hills coupled with hanging scrim that acted as a sky allowed us to project each frame where we wanted it at a given time to tell the story. Additionally, there was live music at certain points from our worship team and a message given by our pastor that helped punctuate each scene.

My part of the creation, was in the story development, set design and character design and illustrations. And I did some voice acting as the Royal Vizar who acted as the advisor to the King.

The best part about the story is that people who wouldn't normally come to church actually came back and brought others with them. And that is far more rewarding than just having a pretty piece of art or successfully executed story.piece of art or successfully executed story.