What can Wingfeather fans expect in season 2?
There’s lots of world-building that took place in season 1. With season 2, you’re off to the races. It comes out of the gate fast!
That said, season 2 can also be the primary time that the children within the story are separated from their parents. It’s where character development begins—they’re having to resolve problems on their very own.
We’re not making a cartoon; we’re attempting to tell an epic story and using animation to do it. Hopefully the result’s something that seems like an actual world. The stakes are high, though. The problems that this family faces are earthy, gritty, and painful.
Part of the explanation we selected the art style that we did [known as “paint motion,” which blends traditional 2D animation with CGI characters] is that we didn’t want the show to feel disconnected from reality. Even though Wingfeather is about in a fantasy world, we wanted the characters to be people you’re attending to know and care about deeply. Even once they’re encountering things that usually are not of this world, they’re encountering them the way in which people in our world would.
Your aim has been to create something with appeal for all ages. What are some themes parents can look ahead to to consult with their kids?
One theme that emerges in season 2 is around names, identity, and calling. For example, one in every of the fundamental characters is known as Tink—but his real name is Kalmar. His understanding of who he desires to be is at odds with who he is known as to be. When I used to be writing the Wingfeather books greater than 15 years ago, that’s one in every of the things God was teaching me—this concept that who he says I’m is more foundational than who I feel I’m.
It’s essential to me that this story operates as a story and never as a Sunday school lesson. Again and again in my notes for the writers on the show, I’ve written in all caps, “NO TEACHABLE MOMENTS.” At the dinner table afterward, you’ll find out what it has stirred up inside kids’ hearts and minds, what it’s that they’re learning.
I’m a pastor’s kid and my antenna is all the time up. Any time I sense that there’s an ethical lesson because the agenda, it sort of pours water on the story for me.
My hope for The Wingfeather Saga is that it can be taken as a story first and can do that mysterious work that God has given stories to do in our hearts. It’s firstly an adventure with characters that youngsters can really discover with; we get to sit down back and watch what the Holy Spirit does with it.
What sort of work do you imagine the Holy Spirit doing with it?
I grew up within the church, but I used to be a nominal Christian who didn’t really know Jesus or have a grasp of the gospel. I just didn’t get it. The yr after I graduated from highschool, I heard a song by Rich Mullins called “If I Stand.” Somehow it cut through all the opposite music I used to be listening to. It got my attention and helped me understand who Jesus really was. Back then, after I said, Yes, Jesus, I’ll follow you, my request to him was that I’d someday give you the option to jot down music that will create that sort of moment for another person.
I actually consider in the humanities. Poetry, storytelling, and music can sometimes be a portal. On the opposite side of that portal is the person of Jesus waiting to be discovered. One of my wildest hopes is that this show shall be one in every of the bread crumbs on the solution to someone discovering Jesus. Just a month ago or so, I received an email from a mom who said her son understood sin and salvation through the story of Kalmar Wingfeather [who runs from his true identity, losing his way before being restored]. When I read that email, I just began crying since it was a solution to that prayer.
If we are able to stir some longing in people, some unrest that leads them to seek out their very own place within the story God is telling, that will be amazing.
Your creativity has taken many forms through the years—songwriting, sketching, painting, writing, etc. What has it been like trying your hand at filmmaking?
Filmmaking is way, far more difficult than any of those other endeavors. I’m so thankful that I get to be within the room, but I’m also thankful that the remaining of the team has a lot experience. The story has moved out from me into this objective space with all these other artists.
I began in music and I’m used to the collaborative process as a songwriter. I’m pretty much versed in not being precious about something that I’ve made; I’ve learned to care more concerning the thing itself than my very own feelings.
In a previous interview with CT, you mentioned that you desire to tell truth as beautifully as you may. Are there any latest truths you’re learning on this season as you wrap up your annual Resurrection Letters tour?
There are times after I feel very drained and harried. I’m trying to seek out a balance between real Sabbath rest, stillness, and leading a quiet life, and at the identical time being out on the road, on tour, proclaiming this incredible story.
To me, the stress is all the time in trying to grasp if I’m purported to pray for rest or vigor. I don’t know if I understand the reply to that query just yet. But on a day like today, I’m thankful to have breath in my lungs and to be on this beautiful, broken world with this news.
The psalmists say a lot about making known the deeds of the Lord; I feel my wife and I each feel a calling and a passion for that. We’re attempting to determine the best way to trust God for the vigor to try this work while at the identical time being courageous enough to sit down still and say no to things—to comprehend that the dominion can also be showing up within the garden in our front yard or across the dinner table. Making known the deeds of the Lord also applies to being with our youngsters and our granddaughter.
I don’t have as much shame and fear anymore. We have a lot evidence at this point in our lives that God is just not going to forsake us. It gives me somewhat more courage to maneuver forward with a way of obliviousness and joy.
J. D. Peabody is the pastor of New Day Church in Federal Way, Washington. He is the writer of Perfectly Suited: The Armor of God for the Anxious Mind in addition to the kids’s fantasy series, The Inkwell Chronicles.
