What is Jamari Animated?

I wanted to explain the project for any new guests to the blog.

Jamari Animated started out as an idea for a birthday present for my nephew Jamari.  I wanted to make a little cartoon for his birthday.  Well, I started talking about it in the notes section of my Facebook page and I got offers to help from my friends and family.

The story:  During a little game of kickball, a bunch of kids discover a little guy wearing a raincoat in the playground without a cloud in the sky.  They make fun of him.  Suddenly, the kids get blasted by the raincoat kid, who surprisingly has weather related super powers.  Raincoat makes it rain and washes out recess.  It’s up to superhero Jamari to save the day.  He uses his super powers, including the Bible, his faith and the power of God to save the day.

Storyboard from film.  Jamari's Bible powers activate.

That’s right.  This is a “Christian Action” cartoon.  It’s based on an idea I had back in college about a show called Bibleman.  I didn’t like the show, but I liked the concept and thought it deserved a makeover.  So I’m giving the Jamari character the superpowers from my makeover idea.  The faith power works like this:  Bible verses glow on the front of Jamari’s armor.  Then, powers based on the Bible verse happen.  For example, if Jamari’s armor glows with Matthew 7: 26 (And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand), then the ground will turn into sand and the bad guys will sink down in the sand.  Cool, huh?  If the film ever becomes an animated series or series of videos, I think it would get kids excited about grabbing their Bible and checking those verses out… and of course, certain verses would be used as super powers over and over and kids could get favorite Bible verses.

I’m creating the film with the computer program Flash.  The film will also be stereoscopic.  That means that it will be the kind of film where you wear the 3-D glasses and the characters pop off the screen. 

The film will be the first festival film from my production company Studio Luke 15, LLC.  It’s also the first film from the Amazing Space Films project, which is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, an arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Amazing Space Films may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.  Anyone who donates to the Amazing Space Films project for Jamari Animated gets a credit in the film!  We definitely need to raise funds to create the 3-D effects and get the 3-D glasses.  If we raise enough money, we may be able to upgrade to a better animation production computer program, like ToonBoom.

You can make a donation here:

Next blog post, I’ll talk about the CINEviews Film Festival.  I’ve already registered for the storyboarding workshop with Tuck Tucker, Lynchburg native and supervising storyboard guy on SpongeBob SquarePants.  I read his bio and he worked on He-Man and She-Ra in the 80’s!  I’m SO bringing my He-Man video for him to autograph!

Jamari Animated Update: Voices are FINALLY Recorded!

One of the reasons I love animation is that the process of creating it always leads to little memorable adventures in life.

The recording session for Jamari Animated was on November 9th at 90.9 The Light – Liberty University. I had NO IDEA that Liberty was so busy at night! The campus is a lot bigger from when I was at Boys State there and I got lost! The students were very helpful in pointing me in the right direction though. The 90.9 facility is great and Justin Berry, their sound mixer that did all the recording, was very nice and very helpful. To support 90.9 The Light, they accept donations at this link.  90.9 The Light.

The boys did a great job! Special thanks to Rhyan and Tyler Cooper who voiced the bully characters! Josh Sosin is the voice of Raincoat, and he did an outstanding job. Thank you Jen Staton and Ginger Cooper for arranging for them to come, and thanks to the dads, David Sosin and Steve Cooper for coming! Facebook made it all possible!

Thanks to my sister Michelle for bringing her boys too. I really appreciate her help with Jamari and Bralyn at the recording session. It was a little bumpy at times, but we got it done!


Jamari and Bralyn have been recording for animation a LOT here lately. They recently created a Halloween Special on GoAnimate.com. It was so well received; the boys have decided that they want to create their own little animated series for the internet, just for fun. They’ll record episodes whenever they get the chance. Part one of episode one is online now.


GoAnimate.com’s Jamari and Bralyn


I also wanted to take a moment and say Happy 40th Anniversary to Sesame Street.  I grew up with Sesame Street and loved it.  I have fond memories of all the great animation (hmmm) and I remember that I could count to 10 in Spanish in pre-school!  Sesame Street was the first "edutainment" for kids and laid the groundwork for films like Jamari Animated to be made.  Thank you Sesame Street and may you have another 40 wonderful years.  http://bit.ly/4FnFHQ



For the newer followers of the production blog, you may have read the blog posts and you may not know exactly what this film is going to be. All we’ve talked about here is that this was a birthday present for my nephew Jamari, Amazing Space Films and fundraising, promotion on Twitter and that the film will be stereoscopic, but that’s not the whole story behind this film. This blog actually started in the Notes section of my Facebook page for my family and friends. A good friend suggested that I make this blog and promote the film to everyone. The next blog post will be a review of those old posts from my Facebook Notes and will be devoted to what Jamari Animated is, the story, the characters, its focus and the fact that this is a “Christian Action” cartoon…



Cheers until the next post!

Jamari Animated Update: A Halloween Special, Recording Voices, 3D Swings and The Power of Twitter for Filmmakers

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I had a great time with my nephews Jamari and Bralyn. While I was helping babysit them Halloween morning, we created a Halloween cartoon over at GoAnimate.com. I broke out my little microphone and they went to town. They wrote it and Jamari co-directed with me... and their grandma was the voice of the ghost! You can check out Part 1 and Part 2 of Jamari and Bralyn's Halloween Special here.

Jamari and Bralyn's Halloween Special, Part 1

I'm really proud of this... they did a great job!


The recording for the Jamari Animated project is on again. The best time for all involved seems to be November 9th. Cross your fingers and say a prayer everyone that it happens this time. I'm praying that it goes without a hitch! I'm going to take advantage of the recording time and get the actors to also record for fundraising trailers. I've got a week to figure that out, so I'm watching tons of fundraising trailers on IndieGoGo.com. I really want to avoid the clichéd "Making of" video... I want them to be fun and interesting so people get excited about being a part of it. I'm leaning towards either an "interview" kind of thing or a dramatic movie trailer voice over kind of thing... or maybe a combo of both.

I'm thumbnailing out some of the scenes from the project that will be using the stereoscopic effects heavily. Here are some thumbnails from the scenes where Jamari is running from Raincoat throwing lightning bolts. Jamari grabs onto a merry-go-round and swings around it, dodging the bolts.

The plan with this is for Jamari's feet to swing out of the screen as he spins around the merry-go-round. I'm learning as I'm designing this and I'm not sure how much of a challenge doing this with Flash (or possibly ToonBoom) is going to be. I'm just thumbnailing the depth script and going from there.

I just wanted to take a minute and talk about Twitter and what it could mean for my project... and all audience funded film projects. At first, I didn't get it. I thought it was just a site for "Facebook Updates". After using it and watching other Twitter users use it, I get it now. Twitter can be just for personal updates if that's what you want, but it's also a fantastic tool for fast, viral networking, promoting your work and tracking performance. For example, I posted my nephews' Halloween cartoon on my Twitter page and checked its performance after a day. When I checked the stats, GoAnimate said the cartoon had 30 hits. Bit.ly reported that 13 of those hits came from Twitter. Bit.ly can also tell you if your link has been retweeted or shared on Facebook.

So, as a creator, I can put a piece of work out there and be able to tell exactly how popular it is and how big of an audience I have. This is key with fundraising (in sales, we called it prospecting). Using Twitter and Bit.ly as tools, I can tell how many people see my fundraising trailer, how many of those people actually donated and come up with a success ratio. With that ratio, I'll know how many people I need to get my trailer seen by to raise the amount of money I may need during my projects. Right now, I have around 100 followers on Twitter and 13 Twitter users watched the Halloween cartoon. That's 13%. So I know that around 10 -15% of my followers will click on one of my links. For sake of argument, lets say 1 person made a donation. So, I would then know that for every 13 views I should get around 1 donation. Of course, those numbers wouldn't stay the same. I would look at those numbers over time and analyze how effective the tweets are, follower to click ratios, click to donation ratios, etc, and I would repeat what works and stop what doesn't. And I used to think that a background in sales was a waste for an animator...

Of course, I'm not saying that we must spam people. I've seen that the best Twitter users mix promoting their work with personal tweets, news related posts and trending topics, all related to what they do. I think the key is that your Twitter stream has to be interesting and fun... while staying focused and true to your brand. In other words, your followers expect a certain kind of tweet from you.

....haha, as if i'm a social media expert.  I'll keep you informed on the results as I go, though.

I also want to thank Twitter for their new lists feature. They basically took the weekly Twitter ritual of "Follow Friday" and turned it into a feature. Now, we're all grouped together in iconic categories. It might seem shallow for some, but hey, every time I'm on an "Animation" list, that's a little victory. It makes things easier too. Say, for example, you're after tweets about cooking, and you trust Paula Deen's opinions on the subject. Well, if Paula Deen's Twitter page makes a list of chefs or cooking Twitter accounts, you can just follow Paula Deen's list instead of tracking them all down yourself. I see it as a Twitter user giving a "seal of approval" to other Twitter users on a specified subject. If you're on Twitter (and if you're not, I highly suggest it), check out my @chaostoon/coolpoints list. Thanks to @GoAnimate, @Hollywood_Tweet, @TheBriness and @Skookum86 for putting me on their lists of professionals. Thanks to @mbusse as well for putting me on a followed Lynchburg, VA list!

Check back for pictures from the recording session!