Production on 'Escaping the System' winds down in Orlando.

Wow - what an incredible adventure the last 2 years have been - it's hard to believe it is winding down. It all started with hearing from my supervisor at the time, Bailey, that the team in Spain was looking for help in animation. I was just finishing work on pre-production of My Last Day (the pilot film of our life of Jesus in anime concept). Bailey and I proposed a research project to see if we could be of help to our sister ministry in Spain (called Agape), and we were off.

I had previously been talking with my friend Dom about the project (CEO of Premise Entertainment here in Orlando - former Disney senior animator and all around great guy to work with). We had kicked around some ideas. Also at that time God brought about a connection (through a mutual friend) to Joshua G. who had just graduated from Full Sail as a rigger for CG characters. Joshua also had a modeler/zbrush artist friend who had also finished Full Sail, and together with Mark from the Pioneers ministry, we had a small team to do some research. Dom did character designs based on Mark's work in Spain, and Ruben modeled our first 4 characters, Joshua rigged them and Josh B. started an animation test.

In December of 2009, One of my supporters, Doug, connected me to Steve with EA, who connected us to Thuan Le - who modeled our next characters. Our test was successful with our executive producer in Spain and the leadership of the Jesus Film Project, and in March of 2010 we were officially launched into season 1 - the production of a prologue, and episodes 1 through 3. We already knew that our first deadline was April - for the premiere of the prologue at the huge comic con in Barcelona. Fortunately, it was mostly 2D with artwork assembled in After Effects, and an ending with one of our first CG characters - Nuyta.

The next deadline was July 4, for episode 1. We were cutting our teeth on a new production process and relying increasingly on a distributed team with only a central core in one place - me, Josh and Ruben, and in March Nick, Michael joined us at the HQ in Orlando, plus a remote lighter, Bobby, and a remote animator, Chris, were added. Episode 1 was mostly 'beauty renders' and 2D screens hand-comped in. It shows in comparison to the later episodes, but that was what we had to do in order to meet the deadline.

With episode 2 we switched to Composite, a node based compositor that I had researched - that came with our Autodesk Maya package. We also started properly breaking layers up into AO passes, screens, fog passes, a light pass, ID mattes and other layers as needed. A flashback hinted at the 'file 0' world that most of the later episodes would feature. Early on we had made the pragmatic decision not to model most of the plants and folliage - but about this time, in God's sovereign timing, He brought along a new art director, Ryan, since Mark had to step out of the role.

Episode 3 was the first 'file 0' world episode - in historical Israel. Ryan did the paintings on 2D cards for most of our plants and parts of the background. But we ran into a serious problem: rendering Mental Ray in Maya, with 2D cards, pointed up the problem that the alpha channel outline of each plant card showed up as a rectangle instead of in the shape of the plant that had been painted. Worse - the zdepth information obtained by just turning on 'render zdepth' flashed and changed values over a range of frames - sort of like a camera doing autoexposure. This really messed up our comp work, until Joshua came up with a technique and script to solve both problems.

During episode 2 I also had to put a proposal together for continuing on with episodes 4 through 7 (season 2, out of 4 seasons; 14 episodes for the complete story arc). We also added Eric as an animator in Michigan, and in December Michael became an animator from his home in Tampa. Between Cinesync, Dropbox, Skype and Google Docs - all the remote integration worked pretty well - and being able to work with so many people from their homes allowed us to attract great talent at our reduced wage level. We also were connected up with volunteers like Katherine for 3D prop modelling, Phil in MA for prop and set modelling, and Chris for prop modeling and scripting help. Also, Isra did all of the 2D screens and 'de-rez' effects from Barcelona.

We were also able to get storyboard help from Ovi (who had worked as our storyboard artist for the My Last day short film under Barry Cook's direction). In fact, the leadership saw the value of retaining Ovi to to storyboard the entire series through episode 14, under Dom's direction. Ovi has a fantastic skill for storyboarding with cinematic storytelling - and it shows in the final result. Thanks Ovi and Dom!

There were other challenges - dealing with twilight lighting in File 0, dealing with lighting by a campfire (hint, we switched to a lighting pass with RGB lighting, one primary for each motivated light in a scene - two actually in the fire to simulate flickering firelight). In March we added Ken as our compositor (finally! - Nick and I had done most of it with Ruben doing some of episode 3). Ken quickly brought his skills from the 'production fires' at ILM to bear on episode 4. Also, Andrew, who had been an intern since January, joined us as our final full-time addition in April of this year.

Oh yes - music came from Joan in Spain, and sound was done by Tim in the Jesus Film Master studio with assists from David, Andy and Cody. A surprise addition - Eric - joined us from the HRX department to do the After Effects work for the effects needed for the exciting little battle that is part of the story in episode 6. Eric called the guys here something along the lines of an oasis of 'the cool people'. Lots of tours that had come through had made it a point for months to come by because the artistry and exciting things the team was working on in 3D were - well - pretty cool.

As I write, episode 6 needs a few final tweaks (see a prelease clip here), most of episode 7 is animated, and Joshua, Andrew, Ken and I are the final 'skeleton team' winding down production under Dom's direction. We've already had a screening for the production crew and wives on the Universal Studios backlot, and a great 'wrap party' with a sharing time that really underscored how we saw the Lord's hand in putting the team together, what it meant in their lives and the relationships that have been forged.

We'll also have a premiere for the Jesus Film crew at large here, on the 19th, and a final time to honor the production team. Many of them have finished and are finding other jobs. By the end of September most everybody will be gone. But the intangible of this entire experience, has been the passion that this project, to a person, ignited in the entire team. They were excited as artists that they were working on something with the larger purpose of helping people learn about Jesus - our savior and the incomparable, central figure of human history. They also appreciated the level to which Dom pushed them artistically and the level their skills rose to. The artistry and larger purpose was truly a rare project dynamic. I've talked to Dom and other people in the animation industry, and I understand that igniting such passion in a crew is rare - but that is just another testimony to me that the Lord's hand was in our midst! I feel blessed to have been a part of it.

From here, the project takes a path of slower development for right now as Isra and a smaller team work on episode 8. The ministry in Spain will determine future episode production and funding, as the first episodes are field tested. Please be in prayer for Isra and the team in Spain as they continue in the production work. Dom and I will be traveling to Barcelona in November to be of assistance in this transition. If you want to support them and their ministry efforts you can do so here.

What's next for me? Right now - I feel a great need for my month of sabbatical, for reflection on what I have learned, and for seeking the Lord and His next steps for me in the New Media department. As producer, I am looking forward to being relieved of the weight and financial oversight for a while. As always, please keep me, Nan, Alex and Aimee in your prayers! Nothing compares to living in the light of His love, and becoming more of the people He intends us to be, in love, grace and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

- Irv