Episode 544: Chris Wall - Wingfeather Saga Show Runner and Executive Producer

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and I am so grateful for all of you who are listening today. Thank you for coming back for another great episode. I'm really excited to get to have a special guest today who is Chris Wall. Chris is the executive producer and showrunner of the Wingfeather animated series, and it's a really great series if you haven't had a chance to check it out. Out yet. I hope many of you have. I'm assuming many of you have. It is a really great series based on Andrew Peterson's books by the same name of The Wingfeather Saga. Just to share quickly about the show for all of you, The Wingfeather Saga chronicles the adventures and transformations of the Igibi family as they discover secrets of their family history, flee the evil fangs of Dang, seek their place in the world, and make a stand against the mysterious ruler, Nag the Nameless. They will need their special gifts and all the love of their noble mother and ex-pirate grandfather to survive the venomous fangs, sea dragons, flabbets, and gulp, toothy cows. So it's a really great series. And I'm really excited to have Chris Wall with us today. Again, he is the executive producer and showrunner of the Wingfeather animated series. Chris Wall, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Glad to be with you today. Thanks for having me.

Well, I have been enjoying the series. And as I told you just before we started recording this morning, I'm not quite done with episode 1 of season 2. But to me, it's, it's really getting into kind of the, the great part of the books. I really enjoy that part of the journey. And it's been a few years since I actually read the entire series. So it's kind of fun to go back and see a little bit of the differences between Andrew Peterson's original books that he wrote from the series, and then to see how it's been captured on the screen here. Tell me a little bit, if you don't mind, I would love to just hear kind of how it went from being a book to this screen phenomenon, because I know that the journey must not have been easy. Even the idea of adapting a story like this and trying to put it into a cartoon form. I just love to hear a little bit about that process. And I know that as people who listen to this show are also a lot of them very creative people doing creative things. I know that they'd love to hear a little bit about that too.

Yeah, well, thank you. It's, um, it started with, uh, VeggieTales, honestly. Uh, we were looking for some new songwriters for silly songs. Larry and I had been introduced to the Slugs and Bugs and Lullabies project by a friend and reached out to Andrew and Randall, uh, and was like, hey, do you want to write some silly songs? And so they said, yeah. I mean, you know, I was mildly embarrassed by it because Andrew's such an— and Randall are both such effective songwriters. Would they be willing to do something silly? Turns out they have a good sense of humor. And in 2008, then Andrew handed me the first Wingfeather Saga book, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. And so I read that with my older kids and we had a delightful experience and just kind of got to experience, like a lot of folks, the whole cycle, all through the 4 books. And as you know from reading them, the journey begins kind of whimsical. It's fun. It's charming. It's clever. You know, the Fangs of Dang is so childish, that name, in the best way. Nag the Nameless, who has no name.

Yeah.

You just said his name. So it's got all these funny, clever— it reminded me of kind of the best of Lewis's Narnia, where it's got that tongue-in-cheek and just— but as we got along, as you know, into that second book particularly, and then by the third and fourth, it just— the stakes grew, the kind of drama and meaning, you know, that frankly I wasn't really expecting. I was expecting a fun journey. And as a dad reading to my kids, found it deeply moving. Some moments that really resonated. And along that, there's a curiosity of like, man, what other ways can we experience this? And so many of us got to experience it with Andrew reading to us, you know, during the beginning of '20, uh, Andrew's shows were being canceled for COVID. And so he got on Facebook, started reading, and hearing him as, as this gifted storyteller just reading to us, and that takes on a new form, right? So you're reading yourself is one thing. I did it as a read aloud with my kids, so they experienced it one way. And then Andrew starts reading, and so there's another way to experience it. And so the curiosity about what other ways could we experience it, and of course I come from a bulk of my career in animation, so it's a familiar tool to me. And I said, Andrew, what do you think about you and I joining forces and going and trying to develop this into an animated series? And he said, why? I said, I'd really like to do a short film first. Let's think about that just to kind of test the audience, because there could be readers and others that are like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want it. I don't want animated. I only want live action, right? They want to see Lord of the Rings, whatever.

Mm-hmm.

And so, so we did this Kickstarter. And did a short film that was really successful and proved out that, like, yes, indeed, fans and audiences really want that format. And that led to a long journey. That was in 2017, we finally did that, and led to a long journey that ultimately went out to a crowd investment at the beginning of '21 and raised money for season 1 to go into production. And that was through some dark nights of, like, not sure this project's going to go forward. Really feeling the sense of community of so many folks like yourself who'd read the books and were like, "These are great. I want these stories to exist in other formats." There's people that simply won't read the books maybe, and so perhaps the show is a way into these moving stories. The opportunity was given to us in '21 because of our fans, and that's all there is to it. I think there's a presumption because we are distributed by Angel Studios that Angel Studios is like Netflix or Amazon who just pays you to go make a show. That's not it whatsoever. Uh, the, the crowd of, of, of wonderful— now over 10,000 people came together and said, and invested sometimes large amounts to say, go make this. Uh, and then we give it to Angel Studios to distribute market. Their job is to go sell it, right? Um, and we make it, they sell it. And, um, so we just couldn't be more thankful for the fans who— we just had our red carpet premiere recently for season 2, and a number of those investors were with us, and they're just families with kids who love the story. And it's the best kind of community, you know, compared to normally how film and television gets made, which is an executive at a large studio that says, I'm not sure it works. Okay, it should work. And that system's fine. In this case, it's all these families saying, please make this story. And so we really carry that responsibility carefully. And that has guided the adaptation. You know, I think that as a result, I'm not doing it for that one guy on the other side of the desk, right, that's paying money to go do it. I'm doing it for this community of people who are engaged monetarily, but they're engaged because they want it to be the story they love. And for Richard and I, that's been just lovely to have that at our back. Like, we think the fans will want this moment, we think the fans will love this thing to happen, right? And just let that kind of lead us forward. And of course, Andrew's had all these years of selling the books, reading the books, and being a part of that community, so he has a good sense of what's important to them. You know, just as like any music— these songs are important, here's my set list that I know the audience really wants. Um, he knows here's the key moments that we want to unpack in a particular way, and then other parts that we can say, let's find the best way to unpack that in our version of the story.

Yeah, well, that really is a wonderful part of the whole creation of this series. I can remember years ago, even before all the books were published, and I was kind of following him along, you know, one at a time as they came out. It was neat being at like Andrew's concerts or even talking on him, to him on this podcast, when he was still writing them. And just saying, you know, the process even kind of started that way with him telling them to his children as bedtime stories, and he's kind of writing them as he goes along. And then the fact that the whole thing is sort of like an extended family affair where, you know, so many people have been involved along the way. Like, that's kind of what we did with my kids. I mean, you made up the stories, Andrew. However, like, it's become a part of our family's life. I do remember, you know, during COVID I actually had forgotten that about the read-through, that there was several nights where my family in the evening, we would just sit and listen to Andrew read the books through. And so those great experiences, and I really think it empowers the show even more, even down to the way that the show is coming out now. Every time I turn on the Angel app on TV, or whether it's on my phone, however I'm watching it at the time, I love how it says like, this episode has been paid for by someone, you know, like, would you like to pay it forward to someone else? Like allowing people to watch it, but then giving people a way to kind of invest in the story and share it. So I love that whole process and the whole community. Behind it there together. And season 2 is actually rolling out in a little bit different way than season 1 did. Would you like to tell our listeners a little bit just kind of about the way that this season is coming out versus last season?

Absolutely. So we totally believe in the crowd and in this, this amazing group of readers and supporters to support the shows, right? So this model that Angel Studios has really championed is what they call community video on demand. So on the drive in this morning, I was listening to NPR and they're doing their spring fund drive, right? And they're community supported radio, you know, give us your $10 a month and we'll give you a mug or whatever, you know.

Right.

I'm a supporter of the Rabbit Room, you know, monthly and part of that group. And there's these places that we understand if we can get, you know, this many thousand hundreds of thousands of people to community support something, it can go on and be a thing, right? And we've seen this all through our history of understanding how community supports stuff. So this is interesting for a TV show that has not— so obviously The Chosen that came before us and the studios did this and we follow in that footsteps of saying, hey, community, if, if everybody who comes in and chips in, right, it lets the show actually be profitable and carry forward. And the reality of that is, and this has been the case case, even with the Chosen, is that it's about 5%, about 5% of viewers that watch a show, whether it's Chosen or us, uh, will contribute to it financially. So the remaining 95%— this feels like I'm at church, right? And suddenly we're, you know, tithing or something.

Um, 5% of the people do, you know, it is a crazy number.

And so, um, and so that model works, but you have to be at a certain scale. And so we've had millions of people now enjoy season 1. But we found that we need to get another kicker to help really get that revenue. Season 3 currently, which we're so excited, is the end of book 2. It is the Ice Prairies, if you remember that part of the story.

Yeah.

And so we have got that through scripting and into animatics, which is the storyboards. But we're on pause right now, waiting to see if we can get the revenue where we need it to be, the money coming in to keep going on that production. And, and so a new model that, that's emerged is this guild, uh, which for the Wingfeather fans, guilds are very much a part of our story in book 3. Uh, so we're kind of advancing that storyline a little bit, becoming part of a guild. But it's basically a way for folks that, um, are able to commit to joining us on a monthly basis and saying, hey, we're going to be a part of this, um, to get to see season 2 first. Um, and, uh, that's hopefully going to raise up a tribe of people who are supporters of ongoing for the show and letting it go out into the world. And then it'll be kind of wider available later. And so it's kind of the classic windowing of, you know, something that might be in theaters and then it's, you know, available for rent and then available for purchase and then maybe available on a streaming platform that you love. And so we're going to go through that process in this to see if we can't boost those revenues a bit to get us going into season 3 because It's our desire to tell the whole story, which is mapped out over 7 seasons. And we don't want to stop before the icebergs. We don't want to stop before they've gotten to some of the more important, bigger moments in the story.

So yeah, well, and I, I could totally see this show as, as years are going by to opening up to other streaming platforms as well.

Absolutely.

A way in there because I think it's, it's as strong as anything I've ever seen in the animated department.

And, and I think, you know, the way we had this first question That was our first question with Angel was to say, hey, we're not— it's not just you, right? Because they're quite small relatively. Like, we can't stop here. And they're like, no, no, no, no, we're the incubator that helps things to get going. And then it has to go out to Netflix, Amazon, Peacock, Hulu, whatever, maybe all of them, right? That's a strategy. So we're looking actually right now trying to get season 1 to those platforms, like in the next few weeks. Like, it's, it's, it's that kind of urgency.

That's great. And you know what? I think that opens up to a much wider audience.

And that's right.

The powerful thing about these stories, too, I think I was trying to explain them to a group of pastor friends of mine who haven't read the books yet. Yeah, but they love Tolkien. They love C.S. Lewis. They, you know, and I said, well, the best way I can describe it, like, and they love Andrew Peterson's music. I mean, who doesn't? If you've heard him, you're a fan for life, for sure. So I kind of explained like, well, you know, you like Andrew already, right? And they're like, yeah. And I said, well, it's kind of like, to me, it feels like you're reading Tolkien, but in some ways, it's much more readable, like, because there's pages of Tolkien where he spends, you know, he feels like 6 pages to describe a tree, you know, things like that. But it's, but it's more like it has the easy flow of like C.S. Lewis, but it's not necessarily allegorical. Like, it really is these powerful stories about you know, really about goodness and evil, you know, it's sort of this thing. And they were like, oh, I'm going to check that out, you know. And so it really has this kind of bigger story. So all that is to say, when I think about like platforms, like whether it be Amazon or Netflix or whoever, several that you named, it doesn't have the feel of like, oh, this is only going to be a Christian audience. It's going to, you know, like—

That's really important. That's really important to Andrew, too, was that it's— the story was never written to be allegory. You know, I think when you— it's funny because he sits between— I agree with you— Narnia and Hell, and he has the flavor of Lewis's writing. It's whimsical, it's beautiful, but it has the epic kind of journey of Tolkien. And so it's somewhere between the two. You know, one of the things we just— we did— this is really tough, I don't recommend this, but we did The Lord of the Rings series as a read-aloud for our family.

Oh wow, it's a lot of reading. Oh man, but we got started when when your kids were 4 and they're now 27, right?

And it was, like you're saying, there was some really beautiful things in there. But boy, a lot of pages, you know, Council of Elrond, whew. And we then just did Narnia. We just finished it a few weeks ago. My youngest is 12. So it was my 12, 15, and 17-year-old that we were driving through these.

And they—

you know, Narnia is interesting because it's fun and whimsical. It doesn't have the same connective tissue. It doesn't have the kind of narrative drive that Lord of the Rings has, right?

Right.

So I think Wingfeather, Andrew, was able to— to give it that narrative drive of like, we're going somewhere, we have a journey, we gotta get to Mordor, right? Like there's a, there's a drive to it that I think was unexpected. 'Cause when you're reading it, it feels like Narnia, but it's, and because it's child protagonist, I think one of the challenges for a lot of readers is when they see it that it's kids driving the story. There's, there's a, oh, that little guy's thing. And I think a lot of adults kind of turn it off. Yeah. You know, Lord of the Rings is important. It's, it's adult stuff with adults, right? Even though they're hobbits who are kind of like children.

Yeah, right, exactly.

You know, I think that there's a misread of what Wingfeather is. They see it as like something that's lighter and just for kids. And so sometimes families will jump into Wingfeather and then be surprised at how challenging the story is, right? That there's real loss and there's real battles. And so they're like, oh, this is older. I have people even on the series now who are like, me and my 4-year-old are going to watch. And I'm like, no, you shouldn't. This is for 8 to 12-year-olds is kind of the sweet spot. Your little guys are going to be alarmed at some of the violence even and kind of the epic stuff that happens. So but the flavor of it, I think, has been the key for us is saying what we experienced as readers and lovers of that story. Let's give it a fresh experience in the animated series. I think one of the challenges of adaptation is it can become derivative. A lot of folks say, give me the— give me the word for word, page for page. You don't want that. It's really boring.

Yeah.

And it's immediately derivative. It is not the same thing that you had in your head. And so what we want is to find a way to make it a fresh experience while keeping the heart of the story the same. So not unlike the Gospels, you know, in that when you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's the same stuff largely that's happening, right? Little difference of opinion about how they saw something, but it's a different vantage. If you imagine Andrew saw the winged feather saga in front of him as a real story, and he just was writing down what he saw. You can imagine us with a different set of tools. So we have, we have cameras, we're going to film what we see, right? He wrote it down and has a certain amount of prose. He can talk about what the characters are thinking about things. We're going to show you those things. So we have a certain amount of efficiency that we can bring and then a certain amount of we had to stage it differently to make sure it makes— it has the same emotional weight and stuff. But the, but the tone, as long as the tone is right, we can change certain facts and details about how things happened. But the tone of the characters and the end result of where they land is the same. And so in season 1, there was quite a bit of shuffling of the deck because we were kind of building it out in the 6 episodes to set us up strongly for season 2. Early in the season had a lot of fans like, "Wait, wait, wait, this is different than the books here and here and here." And we were taking from this and putting to here, and it was a lot of the same moments but just happening in different ways. By the time we got to the end of season, they all went, "Oh, okay. Yep, yep. No, that works." Yeah. Season 2 and book 2, frankly, the plot is tighter. The events are more kind of cinematic and narratively driven. Kind of the setup of what we need and the characters in the story and what's going to drive them is all set. And now it's just time to go. And you really, I'm sure as you did watch on, is it's kind of out the gate, like, let's go, we're going, we're not waiting for any—

so build. So yeah, it's a really kind of edge-of-your-seat thing for me as I'm watching it. And it's fun for me because it's been long enough since I read the books and I want to go back and reread them again now. But it's kind of fresh too, because I'm trying to remember as I watch the show, like, oh, did it happen that way or not? And I don't I don't really care because I'm just enjoying the whole journey, you know, of how it is together. And I love that Andrew is part of the show, the part of the writing and the input and all that's going onto the screen. So you get a really faithful adaptation. And I imagine for him, it's probably some of it too, as we all do when we write something. There's times you go back and go like, I wish I would have said it just a little different. I wonder if he's having an opportunity to kind of do that through this project as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because there's some narrative connection points of, hey, Andrew, we noticed in chapter blah blah blah, that this character has kind of gone away from us. Like, they're just kind of invisible. Yeah, we need to bolster that character back up. So that happened actually when you have a troupe of an ensemble set like the three siblings, right? So the two brothers and their sister, it's, it's easy to forget that, oh, the kid sister's still in the scene. We had that actually. This was kind of a joke when we did the Wingfeather short film. Nugget, their dog, had a part of that. It's a short film. How hard is this? But anyways, there's a part of that story where we forgot about Nugget and he just wasn't storyboarded. He just kind of disappears for like a whole scene. Oh, you're tracking all these characters. It's a mom, a grandpa, and then the 3 kids and their dog and then the villains, right? It just becomes a lot to move about. And it was a very funny bit. But anyways, motivating those characters. So when I look at it as a showrunner, you know, I'm looking at any given scene and saying, can I tell each of these characters what their wants and desires are in the scene? I cannot abide if a character is just staring at the paint on the wall. Yeah, right. They need to have an opinion about what's happening any given moment, right? Even if it's boredom, fine, that's an opinion, but give me something. And so there were some adjustments to be made in the adaptation to kind of tighten that up, because the narrative of the book will get you inside of the head of one character, and you can go for chapters just following this one. But in the visual storytelling, while that person is thinking, you have to kind of get it out of them.

Yeah.

And then clearly there are people around them, right? They're not alone on this desert island. And so you have to kind of think about what would they be feeling at this point in the story? How could they be behaving? And then drive that into the choices they make.

Well, and two things I want to make sure I talk to you about before we're done today, and it has to do with that actually. One is just the animation style for one thing, but then the other is voice actors and sort of the process of that. One thing I noticed this morning and, and I noticed that too, that the, the other characters are not, as you said, just standing around staring at paint on the wall. But one thing I was noticing in the first episode of the second season, it's, uh, Grandfather and, and Oscar, I believe, are running along at one point in the story. And like, it's, it's a little thing, but I really noticed the, the limp that Grandpa has versus the way that Oscar is running. And so you've got like, uh, to me, I just thought, you know, that's something maybe not everybody would, would think about, but he's got this peg leg, so he's, he's running different than the other characters. And they made to like highlight the way it would be different in there. So I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit. I know there must be so much that goes into it, but the animation style of it, it's, it's different than— I mean, every cartoon has its different thing, but tell us a little bit about just kind of like how you would describe the animation style to someone if they hadn't seen it before and kind of what goes into that, because it's a really beautiful look to it.

Yeah, well, thank you. I have to say, you know, I think everything you were saying earlier about how much we love Andrew's writings, both in his memoirs and his music and everything else, and then now in the Wingfeather Saga books, of course, there's an authenticity to the storytelling. There's a believability. It's part of our kind of national culture, you know, is to just be authentic in your journey. It's the influence of Rich Mullins and Ragamuffins, right? It's let's be authentic about who we are and how we do it. So that is something that I hold deeply. Even we were joking earlier, the Slugs and Bugs TV show that I got to make, right? It's how do I ground these characters to make them believable while being silly? They are funny, but I want to ground them. It's something that I've always loved in entertainment when we can believe that person exists, has real thoughts and opinions. The other side of that is when you do really broad fairy tale or these stereotypes of characters and they're not very grounded, not very believable. And that's fun and entertaining, but it lacks a certain something. So that very much guided the process of thinking about how to lift it from the page into a visual series is how do we make it feel authentic and grounded? And so there are choices in every part of the visual design, in character design and through every location design, that the world feels grounded and real. That certainly applies to voice acting. Actually, the same with Slugs and Bugs. So Slugs and Bugs, of course, the TV show, folks aren't familiar, is a puppet thing with Randall Goodgame. And in puppet performance, there's sometimes really wild characters that are kind of, ah, and they shake a lot. And in the casting of that series, I was like, nobody screams, nobody shakes. Just don't do it.

Don't do it.

I want you to be grounded. I don't want— because that's really irritating to parents, you know, for co-viewing. Right. And so the same thing with Wingfeather. It began in the writing and then in the casting, very decisive that we want real voices of real people. So we cast real kids. Super dangerous because they get older and their voices change, but we did it. We cast real adults being themselves, right? And so in our world of animation, there's often kind of these broad, kind of silly characters, right, that are— and they lack an authenticity. Like, I don't believe you, right? Because you're being silly. Now, we get to do that later in our story in season 2 with Florid Sword, and he's quite delightful.

Oh.

You know, he is completely silly. But that's because it's a silly character in the series. But for other characters, it's grounding them. And so the voice performance carries so much. So much weight. Then the visuals go on top, and you think about how to animate these folks with a groundedness. And part of the style that we developed— it was super risky, but we started this process way back in 2015— was saying, we think that non-photoreal— so not photoreal, computer-animated stuff— is more interesting for the audience's imagination than photoreal. So if I go to see a modern CGI animated feature, Zootopia, you know, any one of these, it's all rendered. The fur is right there. Every pixel is right there. So my imagination isn't necessarily engaged. It's fantastical and fun to engage in, but I don't have to fill in traditional 2D animation. You know, we think about Miyazaki and older Disney asks us to because it has a sleight of hand as a sketch. It's old Bambi, right, with just the color splotches. And the audience's imagination is absolutely engaged to fill in the gaps, to tell the rest of the visual story. We wanted that experience. And so we developed a hybrid of CGI animation, which is the characters, with all 2D painted backgrounds. It's kind of old Hollywood. If you saw old Star Wars with the glass plates, you know, where they act in front of, or old Disney with the multiplane cameras where you see the big camera shooting vertically and you see the stacks of celluloids and they give you that sense of— that's exactly how we make our show.

Wow.

So season 1, there was nearly 1,000 background paintings. Wow. Hand-painted by real artists like Aidan Peterson, Andrew Sun, and lots of others. Um, and our art director Garrett Taylor just made the world fully grounded and layered and rich. What we can do in that is make it really rich and illustrative, meaning it looks like a storybook. So when you look at it, your, your brain kind of fills in what that environment is like. Uh, perhaps it's a forest you visited or a farm you visited before, and it feels like a real space even though painted, right? Because I'm going for the abstract. I'm allowing the audience to kind of fill in what they want, the rest of that. And the story itself that Andrew had told was like that too, right? Allow the— or story off the page.

Yeah.

With his notes, if you remember those. And so we wanted to do a similar thing in the visual style. Now that influences how we animate the characters too. If I put an animated character in front of an abstract background, I can't make them move in a, in a real way. You know, we think of like Polar Express, where it's motion capturing real actors. Your brain would break, right? Because you've got a real, a very real object in front of an abstract background. And so the animation itself is influenced by stop-motion techniques where we animate on twos. And so we, we can do some things that are painted. The characters themselves are shaded in ways that are more 2D influenced. And there's a lot of, a lot of artistic choices to bring together what has a style that is now kind of on trend, right? And so when we were first developing it, we were told by a lot of the studios, we love this, so beautiful, but people want the Pixar look. Can we just do the Pixar look? And we're like, we think people are tired of the Pixar look. We think it's been done for too long, and there's a new style that should emerge. And they were like, well, we'll see. Well, Spider-Man: Spider-Verse came out in '17 and changed everything. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And it made— suddenly now we're kind of in the moment, right? We're like on trend, even though we were working on it a couple of years prior. So it's been a joyful experience now watching audiences rally to it just from the style itself and embrace that. And yes, this is something we've wanted to see and we're using like the latest technology to make really abstract art, which I think is really fun, you know?

Well, and, you know, I'm glad you said that about it's kind of based on a stop-motion approach too, because my son the other day, who's 11 years old, I was watching it. We haven't actually had a chance to sit down and watch it together yet, just with school busyness and everything. And I kind of watch it when I can. I'm in grad school myself, so. But he walked in as I was watching it, ironically enough, and he goes, is that stop motion? You know, it looks like stop motion.

And so that's right.

Yeah, it was. And he is actually really into stop motion. Like, he'll get his Godzilla figures or whatever and make these stop motion animation things. So for him, it's like he likes the animation style and He's into Roblox right now, so I'm trying to steer him towards the Wingfeather Roblox.

Yeah, we have a Wingfeather Roblox. Yeah, yeah. I tried to play it one time. It was super embarrassing. I'm no good at it. My kids are great. It was a disaster. Animation itself. And I love that you mentioned your son does that because it is a— it is a cool field of art creation in that people who are technologists, right, they're just super smart. In that space can create art, right? So these are folks who may not be a painter or a songwriter or an author, but they can use technology. Like, I mean, if I could show you, it just would blow your mind how much lines of code is involved in making art. It empowers a really interesting group of people to be able to make art, probably go off and do other sciences and find ways to, you know, drill oil wells or something. I don't know. Uh, and instead they're able to create art through this medium. And it is the coolest thing to see that happen because I think most of us are familiar with more traditional arts. And when you see, um, this side being used, it's, it's very exciting. And there's something quite special about animation, like your son has experienced, where I, as a, as a, as a creature created by God, uh, can go sub-create I get to put my hand, endow it with my gifts, and bring it to life, right? I animate it. It is dead, and then I animate it, right? His Godzilla characters, he's in stop motion, he's animating them, he's imbuing them with life. And all stories are this way, right? But in animation, we're literally taking dead things in the computer, in this case, bringing them to life. Frame by frame. Yeah, right. Lovingly bringing that character, bringing somebody else's voice. It's such a collaborative art too. And I mean, there's, there's hundreds of people in our show that have contributed in different ways to, to bring it to life. And it is taking, you know, something dead and our breath of life flowing into it to create it. It is, it is an astonishing process because it's, it's slow and laborious and you're not sure. It's a bit of Frankenstein. I'm not sure this one's going to come off the table. And then it sits up and it has thoughts and opinions and it tells you its own story and you're like, oh my God, That's amazing.

Well, I love that. I do believe that the kingdom of God generates creativity. I really do believe that. And I see that through— I mean, not only with like the Rabbit Room and things that we've talked about here today with just that creative community that comes about, but I see it through the Wingfeather Saga. I mean, we see it in Slugs and Bugs and all the different creative projects, whether it's been your VeggieTales creations or different things throughout the years. I just, I love the generativity of it and the giving process of it that allows people to take part in it as well. So that's— it's just well done. So before we're finished with our conversation today, I just want to ask, is there anything you were hoping to tell people about today that we didn't get to yet in our conversation?

Well, I hope people will take the time to go watch this, watch it with friends. I think there's often suspicion in our— there's so much to watch. Should I watch this? Is it any good? Is it worth my time. And I think as you and I have experienced in reading the books, it's worth your time. It's heading somewhere and it's heading somewhere important. I think in this cultural moment, it's heading somewhere meaningful. The story, as you know, deals squarely with identity, identities that were given by our culture, identities by our family, and how we take on those identities and decide to rebel against them or embrace them. And of course, characters in the story do both. Birth, and we see the outcomes of those choices. And I think we're in a moment in our culture where that's more meaningful than ever for families and their kids to think about, how do I derive meaning out of my identity in my family and my community and the culture around me? Do I, do I find it in my own heart, right, as Walt Disney offered, which I think brings dissatisfaction? Or do I find it in my Creator, which I we find brings great satisfaction. And this story is going that direction very quickly to ask those questions and watch characters make choices, some very dark and difficult choices we'll see in season 2 that are hard to grapple with. And I think it'll be interesting conversations around it. But the story is true. Andrew writes that a lot. The stories are true in a capital T sense, you know, in that, yes, it's a fantasy story, but it's deeply true. A lot of folks have tried to say, like you were saying earlier, is it a Christian story? No, but it is deeply Christian. And we don't want folks to walk in expecting, well, I'll have a gospel presentation in 3 episodes. That's not the— that's not the journey. That's not the field that we're working. The field we're working is one that we hope creates that sense of deep longing through story that folks walk away— I don't know why I feel this way. But I feel like there's something deeply true about the way this family not only loves each other, but actually likes each other. That feels like my family. They're going to handle hardship in a way that feels like my family. These are things that, that are the deeper fabric, the subversive fabric. That's what we were excited about. We're not here for an overt tale. And frankly, an overt tale probably gathers more clicks, right? It's easier to sell God's Not Dead than it is to put together Stalker. Yeah, you know, um, but I would just encourage families to not only participate and, and enjoy this story together, uh, but also go tell friends about it. I think there, um, are a lot of stories offered in the world that, that lead to kind of meh, you know, uh, and this is one that's going to lead to some really beautiful fruit. And, um, and I hope folks will lean in there.

Yeah, well, you know what, just as a spoiler for— it's not even a spoiler, it's a, it's a teaser for people listening today, if they haven't checked out the first season or read the books yet, go in asking the question, what are the jewels of an era? You got to find that. So, you know, that's kind of the one of the cool things. And I must say, even though I've read the book and all of the books and I knew what was coming, getting to that part in the show, it made me choke up a little bit when, you know, when we discover with everyone else, you know, what the jewels are. And I just think it's a powerful moment and it was really well captured. So that'll be be kind of the teaser for anyone listening. Go and discover what that is because it's a really important part of the show for sure. Well, thank you so much, Chris, for being here today. And I just want to say quickly to everyone listening, of course, go and check out this show. It's on, on the Guild app, and I actually can watch it on my Fire TV. I can find it on my phone. But, but the Angel app, which you probably watch The Chosen or whatever you're, you're watching, that's one of the biggest shows out there right now. You can find this on there. It's worth your time. Just one thing associated with this show for our listeners today. Coming up in August, the 1st through the 3rd, just outside of Chicago, Illinois, Bourbonnais, Illinois, and at Olivet Nazarene University, I am a part of putting on a conference this year that is the Wesleyan Songwriting Summit. So I've not announced it yet on this show.. But if you're interested in being a part of that, you can find out more details at my website at rickleejames.com. So thank you everybody for listening today. And Chris, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Well, and again, thank you all for listening to Voices in My Head this week. I'm grateful for each of you, and I'm glad you could be here. Please make sure to go to rickleejames.com www.rickleejames.com to find out more, not only about this show, but all of the things that I'm a part of right now. And hopefully we will be back very shortly in the next week or two with some more episodes for you. Grad school is wrapping up for me for the semester, and so I'm hoping to have a little bit more time to get more of these podcasts out to you on a regular basis. But thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head. God bless you, and we'll see you here next time.