Cradle Animatic - Now on YouTube

Back in March of 2019 I made a post on our blog about Will Wight.  This was the first time I saw an indie published book hit the top 5 on Amazon's overall list, so I wrote a little note of congratulations to Will, someone who I had never met. I should note that Will went on to hit #1 on Amazon - and multiple times!

It wasn't until I was watching Adam Grandy's Indie Author Documentary that I learned just how much that post meant to Will (and his family).  Years later, I did some mentoring of Will and his team to get him to (a) run Kickstarters and (b) move from print-on-demand for his books to doing print runs and getting them into mainstream brick-and-mortar distribution.

I've been nothing but thrilled with Will's success, and just about exactly two years ago he surpassed my capabilities at "taking it to the next level" by launching an initiative to animate Will's Cradle series. His Kickstarter brought in more than 1.25M and a few months ago I flew out to Los Angeles for the animatic premier.

I WAS BLOWN AWAY!

Not only was it entertaining, but it as a testament to the quality and stewardship of an author's vision when they had full creative control. For those that didn't back the Kicksarter here is a bit about what was produced (text from Will's team):

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This is the two-hour animatic movie adaptation of the first two books in the Cradle series funded by the Kickstarter campaign we ran in 2024! Enjoy this journey through Unsouled and Soulsmith. 

This animatic was directed and hand-drawn by veteran animators Jay Oliva and David Hartman of Lex + Otis Studios. It includes an original score and a top-notch voice cast featuring Matt Mercer, Steve Blum, Travis Baldree, Kari Wahlgren, Phil LaMarr, Baraka May, Sumalee Montano, Matthew Yang King, Morla Gorrondona and Maxine Phoenix. 

The script was written by Will Wight himself with the help of Cradle fanatic and writer/producer Cory Gustke. Original score composed by Frederik Wiedmann. Even though it is black and white and hand-drawn, we would rate this as PG-13. There is quite a bit of violence.

An “animatic” is the step before full animation. Since it is hand-drawn, the character designs aren’t perfectly consistent from scene to scene. If we were able to pair with a studio to fully animate this project, the characters would be “on model” and look consistent and the motion would be fluid. 

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Recently, Will's team posted the animatic on You Tube, so I'm here to share it with you. Yes you can watch all 2 hours and 10 minutes of it (be sure to stay through all the credits as there are some great bloopers)

But to truly appreciate the "vision" of what this could be - you MUST see the full-color fully animated trailer:

I'm sure you'll enjoy both.

The next logical step is for some big studio (like Netflix or HBO) to build on what Will and his team have started and produce an animated series or movie. I do hope that happens. But more than that, I have a dream that Will can continue to maintain "his vision and involvement," something that is definitely not an easy thing to do when "Hollywood" is involved.  Will and his whole team have proved time and time again their abilities - if anyone can do it, I think they can.