I have a secret project in the works. At this early stage, I am hesitant to share, yet at the same time I am bursting with love and lightness, ready to radiate! It lights me up like a rainbow, allowing me to show many colors of the creative fire inside.
Rose & The Flying Horse is an animated film. At this point in the pre-production process, I have a feature-length screenplay, available to Download. I also have the character design underway, and I've started the voice recording process, as you see above.
Our current Steemit Vision Quest is all about "Storytelling," and it feels like divine timing for me to share this now. I hope you will share some enjoyment with me. Rose & The Flying Horse feels like a Godsend, divinely inspired and cosmically orchestrated.
🌞 🌜 🌟
“Rose & The Flying Horse”
The Vision
My daughter, Rosalie, plays the role of "Rose," who is the protagonist in our story. I made it a goal to record her parts before she started Kindergarten, a few weeks ago, because I believed her unique speech patterns would change once she started to attend public school. Fortunately, we managed to get into the recording studio the day before school began.
The Story
A little girl, Rose, misses her brother, Gael, who is visiting his biological father in Mexico. Rose calls upon her spirit guide, a pegasus, to materialize in the earthly realm in order to fly her to her brother. When Rose and the flying horse arrive at their destination in Mexico, Gael is missing, surprisingly. As it turns out, Gael has also called upon his spirit guide, a wolf, to deliver him to the States, where he is captured at the border.
Rose & The Flying Horse is a story about a family growing together by embracing their "greater family," including those benevolent forces of the Spirit realm. In the story, Rose's family joins forces with Gael's second family, in search of the missing children, assisted by the pegasus, the wolf, a dragon, a horse, two cats, and three chihuahuas. Mother Mary makes an appearance as her Apache equivalent, Tonantzin, nicknamed "Nancy," who closely resembles Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The story touches on subjects of border wars, and racism, working to break down these walls of separation between nations. Like life, certain scenes involve desperate people in dangerous situations, making dumb decisions. Mostly, though, this is a lighthearted tale about kids working wonders in the world in order to be together.
Download the screenplay: Rose & The Flying Horse
The Process
Being a cartoon animator is a newly remembered passion of mine. A few months ago, reflecting on my life, I decided to make animation a new priority for my filmmaking career. A big idea came quickly, and that's when I knew I had to start with a story.
The initial storyline arrived in a flash, and then, when the waves of various possibilities opened up I felt overwhelmed at first. I had to get organized, in order to manage the maelstrom of ideas. Eventually, a "mind map" allowed me to flush it out by identifying the major plot points in a visual way.
I wrote the screenplay through Amazon Storywriter, which is a fantastic free online screenwriting tool. Download the full screenplay: Rose & The Flying Horse [Draft]
I'm currently sketching the characters by hand, to begin. Then, I build "puppets" in Adobe Illustrator. These are multi-layered digital illustrations, with moveable parts. Naturally, the eyes will blink and shift, while the arms and fingers will bend, etc.
I'll handling the cartoon animation in Adobe Animate, which is the newest iteration of Adobe Flash. I've had some experience with animation before, mostly for promotional purposes. This new project is much more ambitious than any of my previous animation work, although there will be similarities in style.
Examples of my previous animation work:
- Dr. Algorithm is an animated teaser for an educational software, which I created from start to finish in 24 hours.
- Smear The Burger is a chase scene between a burger and condiments, which I art directed for an animation studio.
- Wild Goose Chase is an experimental stop-motion animation created by my son and I.
I aim to begin production on January 1, 2019. Hopefully, this will give me time to wrap up two documentary films I'm working on, along with completing my ordinary videography work. By the time January comes, I'd like to have all of the animation puppets prepared, along with the artwork for my background scenes. With some luck, I might even have all of the voiceovers recorded by that time.
The Quest
This is my entry to Steemit Vision Quest 21: Storytelling. Thanks to 
