Building the Bible, Brick by Brick with Go Chatter Studios

In this episode, we chat with Josh Whitehouse of Go Chatter Studios, an innovative initiative where the Bible is being brought to life through captivating LEGO animations, designed to engage both young hearts and unacquainted minds alike.

Josh shares his remarkable journey that turned a near-fatal battle with cerebral malaria into a passionate mission fueled by faith. We delve into his upbringing in a Christian family and the challenges he faced in figuring out how to channel his love for LEGO into a tool for spiritual engagement. This conversation brings forth not only inspiring anecdotes but also a deeper understanding of the purpose behind Go Chatter Studios: to share the message of Jesus through animated storytelling.

Throughout this episode, we explore the meticulous process of creating short yet powerful animations. Josh describes the various stages involved, including scripting, building sets, and animation, all while ensuring that the true essence of each Bible story is conveyed. We learn how each project is a collaborative effort, emphasizing teamwork, creativity, and an unwavering commitment to spreading the Gospel message.

As we look towards upcoming animations, you’ll discover how you can get involved and support this meaningful mission. Join us to be inspired by the incredible stories of faith, resilience, and creative expression. Don't miss out on this opportunity to widen your understanding of how modern mediums, such as LEGO, can intertwine with spiritual narratives for a truly transformative experience. Subscribe, share, and help us spread the word on this exciting journey toward bringing the Bible to life!

Chapters

• 0:02 Introduction with Josh Whitehouse
• 5:13 Fun Behind the Scenes
• 51:08 Personal Testimony: Overcoming Illness
• 1:59:49 The Mission of Go Chatter Studios
• 5:22:17 Engaging Children with Bible Stories
• 7:00:23 Creating LEGO Bible Stories
• 8:13:22 What’s Next for Go Chatter Studios
• 21:10:03 Supporting the Ministry and Upcoming Projects

Transcript

Joey: 0:00

We're here with Josh Whitehouse of Go Chatter Studios. This has been a really fun. How this happened, you know I reached out to Josh and I saw his stuff online. I think it was my wife, actually, that first saw it. Whatever you guys are doing, it's working. Somehow it ended up on our screen somehow the algorithm. So it's working. Keep it up. But we found it and we thought man, we want to learn more no-transcript.

Josh: 0:50

So much for having me, joey, it's such a blessing to be here on this interview, on this podcast. And yeah, yeah, I mean I've been a Christian my whole life. That's a very standard start to a Christian's testimony. But yeah, I have been a christian my whole life. I grew up in a christian family and ever since I was young, I've been being taught the gospel, taught jesus, but that doesn't make me a christian. Um, and it's not through my parents faith that I am saved. It's, it's through my own faith, and so it was. It was when I was about 12 that I first made that initial commitment to god and to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm going to be a Christian, I want to be a Christian, I want to take this faith in for myself. But I think it was, I think, the probably the biggest moment in terms of my testimony in the past few years.

Josh: 1:42

My life was about three years ago uh, back in, back in 2022, and now my, my family, had emigrated out to south africa in 2014 and we'd been living in south africa for about seven or so years at that point, and we, we took a trip. We took a trip up to kruger, the northeast. Sorry about that, no worries. Still, we took a trip up to kruger in the, the northeast of south africa, um, and I came back with cerebral malaria, which is a very, very, very serious disease and a very, very serious case of very serious disease, and I almost lost my life. Um, I spent three weeks in hospital and the doctors didn't think I was going to make it. They didn't think I was going to make it, but God pulled me through that.

Josh: 2:32

He threw through the answered prayers of many, many people around the world that were praying for me. He pulled me through that, and that taught me a couple of things. Firstly, it's that God is always in control, and even when you can't see what is happening, you can't see why on earth is. Why on earth am I, as I was 17 at the time, why did I almost lose my life? And God was in control and he had a plan. Because that has shaped the rest of my life and and my attitude towards life in so many ways. Because that was the second thing was it made me realize that we don't know how long we have left on this earth, we don't know what time God has given us, and so we should be using every single moment that God has given us for his glory, for his purposes.

Joey: 3:26

And that really sparked me. It was like a second lease, like a second lease on life.

Josh: 3:29

Yeah, exactly Exactly. And it really sparked in me the sense of mission, like I have to be using my time for God and his glory, because I don't know how much longer I've got left. And when I was 12 and first made that commitment, I hadn't felt good enough to get baptized, but it was. It was this, this getting malaria, this almost losing my life that that made me realize no, I can't keep on putting this up off because I don't think I'm good enough, because I'm never going to be good enough. And so so it was. It was shortly after that that that I got baptized and that just turned my life around. And it has been, and that was one of the most pivotal moments for me in my entire life.

Joey: 4:08

I'm so thankful you shared that and it's such a contrast, or seemingly a contrast. Right, we have this deep, scary story with these toy sets in the background, but I'm excited to see how this is going to come together, how there's such a great mission and purpose here in what you're doing and what we're talking about, and how you know you can think, oh, that means you know, I had that experience, so I became a full-time missionary or ordained or pastor or clergy or man. God has a certain mission for you right now. I'm just excited and think of all the young people that could be watching or listening. You know, when they find out about hey, there's an interview about Legos Bible man, maybe there's a young teenager watching right now, listening right now. What a testimony, you know, at 17 years old, realizing, man, I'm not guaranteed the next day. I want to live for the Lord.

Josh: 5:03

Yeah, this is. This is what I'd encourage those kind of people that are listening. If you're, if you're young, and especially if you're going through a really tough period in your life like during the time it is, it's so tough, it genuinely and and that's that's not a bad thing but if you're a christian, you can hold on to that hope that God has a plan, that God has a plan and, as I've seen in my life, I went through a very tough time when I was 17. But I've been able to look back over the past three years and see exactly why God put me through that time, exactly why I went through that, and it's built me up as a person in so so many ways. That and it's it's built me up as a person and in so so many ways, and and that is that is the promise that god gives us, isn't it?

Josh: 5:49

Romans, romans 8, 28 in all things, god has a plan. Yeah, for those who love him, um, and that's just such a, it's such an amazing promise to be able to hold on to that. Even if you're going through a tough time in your life, god has a plan. He's going to be using that in some way amen, amen.

Joey: 6:04

Um, you know, for folks that are watching or listening, I'm, you know, looking away here doing the sound and some of the technical stuff. But, uh, man, just because I want everybody to hear what you're saying, ah, so blessed. Uh, joshua, josh, um, I'll probably go back and forth between josh and joshua D. You know, that's the amazing thing about the Lord. You know we could talk about this one thing for the hour, but there's a lot of other things that we want to talk about. So, in kind of changing subjects, I realize too. You know, we have 10-plus minutes into our time together and people still might not know what's with the Legos, what are we talking about? What's going on? So I want to kind of skip ahead. Before we come back, just tell us a little bit about Go Chatter Studios, about what you guys are doing, kind of why you're our guest today, and what we'll be talking about.

Josh: 6:55

Yeah, sure, so Go Chatter Studios is a ministry that is making the Bible brick by brick. So we are making three to four minute long lego animations of stories from throughout the bible, and the goal is to make the whole bible in lego stop motion. Now, obviously there's going to be a few areas of bible that are trickier to make into lego stop motion, but if you picture, if you picture, for example, a children's storybook bible, a picture book, that's that's what we want to do, but in lego stop motion in three to four minute long videos, and so by the end of the project the goal is to have 70 to 80 lego animations from throughout the whole bible that are telling the story of jesus, from genesis to revelation, and we're nine animations in so far. We've got another two coming out in the next couple months. So, as I'm sure we'll talk about a bit later, we've got Creation coming out on the 5th of March and then the Prodigal Son coming out a month or so after that, and so, yeah, we're a decent way into the project.

Joey: 7:59

Let me ask you one thing, and I realize we're going to backtrack here in a moment to get more of the start in the story, but I've seen only a few of them. I need to catch up. I've seen a few. Are you purposing to committed to maybe that's too strong of a word having the gospel at the end of every single one, or is it kind of animation by animation?

Josh: 8:24

So what we're trying with all of our animations is to always tell more than just the story, because there's a lot, there's a lot of bible stories out there and then lego, stop motion animations that that tell the story, and that's that's great. That genuinely is that, don't get me wrong that's a really, really good thing to be doing. It's just telling the story, but we do, as an organization, we do want to be going that step further as well, particularly because a huge part of what we're doing is is evangelistic. Lego is such a such a draw, such an eye-catching medium to be using.

Josh: 8:58

Yeah, that what we're doing is is actually very evangelistic, especially online and because of we don't want to just be telling the story, but we want to be bringing in the meaning behind each story and pointing to Jesus. So it won't necessarily always be the explicit word for word gospel message at the end of every animation, but we will always be trying to be bringing in the meaning behind each story and, where possible, pointing at jesus. So, for example, I don't know if david and goliath is one of our animations that you've seen, but we tell the story of david and goliath and then go into why david is a picture of jesus. Why why that story is so important and what it means for us today. And that's something that we do with all of our animations and will continue to do for the whole project.

Joey: 9:48

Gotcha, gotcha, yeah. The last one that I saw was Jonah, so that was just too easy. I mean, jesus said, like Jonah, I'm going to do this.

Joey: 9:57

So, that was just the Lord set that one up for you so amazing. Okay, so now everybody's up to speed. Go Chatter Studios, the entire Bible, as you would find it almost like a children's Bible 70 to 80 animations, the whole Bible, brick by brick. Now let's rewind a little bit Now. I didn't tell you this ahead of time, but my wife actually thought of this question. Can you remember your first Lego set? I can, indeed.

Josh: 10:30

Oh nice. Can you remember your first lego set? I can indeed. Oh nice, okay, it was. It was a, a lego castle, um, so it was. Oh, what was it? Yes, it was a very, very old lego castle that came out in the 1970s or 80s how do you, how do you even get a hold of?

Josh: 10:40

that. Well, my dad got a hold of it on on ebay and he got it for me for my fifth birthday. Um, and like he knew he knew I I liked castles. I was big into medieval swords, knights, castles, that sort of thing. And so he found, he found this castle on ebay, bought it for me for my fifth birthday.

Josh: 10:58

It was a massive, like 700 piece set, which for a five-year-old is I was gonna say as your first set my first set is my first set, um, but yeah, threw me in the deep end and that's really got what got me hooked, got me started, and it just kept on growing and growing from there. So, yeah, that was, that was my first set that's amazing.

Joey: 11:17

Do you remember what it was like building it? Was it hard or frustrating? Did it come easy, was it? What was it like when you finished? Tell us more about that first set man, yeah, I mean the.

Josh: 11:27

The first time I built it was with my dad, um so okay, he was out as a five-year-old okay first 700 piece lego set.

Josh: 11:34

No, my dad, my dad did help a lot, so so he, he likes, he likes to claim that, um, he's the reason this whole ministry started.

Josh: 11:42

Okay, um, but yeah, yeah, no, so so it was, it was a lot of fun, but but what I do remember is that, with with all of the lego sets that I built and and even that early on I would build them and I'd enjoy building the set and I built that first one with my dad, but then I'd take it apart and I'd build something else. And that that was the case right from the beginning of of my passion for lego was I'd always I'd build the set because it was fun. I'd got the set, but then I'd always take it apart, I turn it into something else. With this castle, I turn it into various other castles, into ships, what it, what, whatever it was, um, and that was the case with every single set. I got it, it would, it would last for a few days, and then I'd start taking pieces from it interesting because most people display them, but you wanted to take them apart and and recreate, I mean right from the age of five.

Joey: 12:32

And we can see I mean I'm pointing behind you, we can see. Well, that's that makes sense now, right?

Josh: 12:37

yeah, take, take the pieces and make your own thing. These ones I keep together because, yeah, models and I have to.

Joey: 12:44

But but it was up to me.

Josh: 12:46

They'd all be in pieces by now. That's funny. Something else into dragons, whatever, but what?

Joey: 12:50

I mean is. What I mean is and we touched on this already right, the, the creativity that the lord has given you, with the imagination that you can take, you know the I don't know what the right word is the unassigned bricks or the individual bricks and create your own set right, your own design in a sense, and I look forward to hear about your team and who's helping you and what different people do. But that gifting that again I'm thinking of if parents are watching and listening, right, that way the Lord designed you right and the way the Lord made you and the mind he gave you really really neat, really interesting to see how that's developing. You know, I guess the next sort of well, if, if you wanted to say anything on that, I mean I, I was.

Josh: 13:32

I was just going to say that that every aspect of this ministry is down to the lord, like the, the, the gifts that he's given me is down to the lord, as, as we'll find out as we'll chat about in a bit how he got me here, it's all down to the lord, and and that that is the the case with everyone in ministry is that their gifts and skills are all down to the lord and we are, we're just vessels that god is using for his kingdom and his glory oh man, amen.

Joey: 13:57

So I guess the next logical thing would be well, you, you got your, your castle built, you unbuilt it. And how do we get to, brick by brick, through the Bible? I mean, how did this develop into you starting this ministry and this project?

Josh: 14:13

Absolutely so. As I mentioned earlier on, a big part of this was the fact that my family emigrated out to South Africa in 2014. So I'd already been a Lego fan from from when I got my first, first Lego set, that first castle. I'd been a Lego fan since then, but it was when, when my family emigrated out to South Africa, that that that really, really grew. And I'd always wondered, from from when I was five, six, seven, eight years old, I'd always wondered, from from when I was five, six, seven, eight years old, I'd always wondered how on earth can I be using my, my skills and my passions for God? Right, because I was a Christian, I love Lego and I remember being in a Sunday school where they were they were talking about the parable of the talents and I remember thinking, oh, how can I be using, how can I be using my skills in Lego for God? At the time I was like, maybe I build a whole church out of Lego and people can worship in a Lego church.

Josh: 15:13

Which, yeah, gives you insight into my eight-year-old imagination, but obviously that's not very practical, and so I wasn't really sure how I could be using my skills and passions for God.

Josh: 15:23

Anyway, as I said, my family emigrated out to South Africa in 2014, and there we started homeschooling. So my my parents um bought nature reserve. We lived in the middle of nowhere, and so we didn't see people a lot, so we were homeschooled out in South Africa, and so what that meant was I was able to do all my school in the morning, I was done by lunchtime and I'd spend the rest of the afternoon every afternoon playing with Lego, building models, and then, once I turned 13 and was allowed to get allowed to start entering competitions online, because you have to be 13 or above to enter some of these online competitions that was what really took my passion to the next level. I'm quite a competitive person, and so I found out about these competitions when I was 12, actually, and started building models for them, waiting a whole year, and then, as soon as I was 13, I started entering them, and that was the next five years of my life pretty much just building and entering these Lego competitions.

Joey: 16:26

Let me interject there because I know nothing about this. Maybe some of our listeners or viewers can you elaborate on kids listening if they want to participate.

Josh: 16:38

Yeah, sure. So the site that I first got involved with is Lego Ideas. That I first got involved with is Lego Ideas.

Josh: 16:43

So if you're a fan of Lego, you may well have heard of the Lego Ideas line, which is essentially fan designers designing models that then have a chance of becoming a Lego set, and so all the products in the Lego Ideas line have been designed by fan designers rather than official lego designers. Yeah, and, and that was particularly what caught my imagination was designing a model with the chance of it becoming a lego set have any of your models become one sadly, sadly not, oh man that would have been crazy, very, very hard process okay, um but the.

Josh: 17:19

So the process is first you have to get to 10 000 supporters on lego ideas and then it goes through a review process once you get to that 10 000, and I got two of my models to 10 000 supporters but hey, that's something cool.

Joey: 17:33

Do you remember what they were? Can you share what they were?

Josh: 17:35

yeah, yeah, so it was a. It was a fantasy castle was the first, of course, of course, of course, of course, and then a working lego orrery, um, and if for the, for those of who don't know what an orrery is, it's essentially a kinetic model where the sun's in the middle and then you have the earth spinning around the sun and then the moon spinning around the earth at the same time. And, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, so those are the two that got to 10,000, but sadly, neither of them passed the review, so you were doing that your whole teenage life.

Josh: 18:09

So I was doing that my whole teenage years and then also on Lego Ideas. They have competitions where they'll give you a prompt. You get 30 days to build based on that prompt. You submit an image.

Joey: 18:20

These are different kinds of competitions and things you could do Okay.

Josh: 18:29

And is that through the same site. I think I'm looking at it now. Uh, challenges, yeah, like lego ideas, okay, yeah, challenges. And then they, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that. Um, so, yeah, that's that's what really got me started. And then I started moving into the, the wider community there's. There's lots of competitions run on on discord stuff like summer jououst and Bricks, calibre, all these sorts of things in the wider LEGO community. But as I started making more and more LEGO models, I got more and more known in the LEGO community.

Josh: 18:58

And yeah it just started expanding, so you're LEGO famous. I'm just kidding.

Joey: 19:00

In some circles, in some circles, okay okay, well, hey, hopefully how do I say this properly? Hopefully you will be, because of what the lord's gonna do and how the lord's gonna use it. Amen. So praise the lord, awesome, um. So now you're getting to 17, 18. You go through this tremendous uh trial in your life. You nearly die, yeah, um. So where are we at now in the the?

Josh: 19:22

So go back a couple years first to lockdown, and that's where the.

Josh: 19:29

Bible animation started. So it was during lockdown that my mom actually suggested hey, why don't you make some? She was helping with the Sunday school at the time and she asked me hey, could you make some? Could you make some lego animations for my sunday school lesson? And so I made. I made a few very, very basic lego animations during lockdown. Uh, over the course of 2020 it was um, and I posted these. I posted these to my youtube YouTube channel at the time and then very quickly started losing subscribers because I I'd I'd never posted Christian content before, and then suddenly I was posting Christian content and I started. Now it was only it was only like 20, 30 subscribers that I lost, but at the time that was a big deal for me, yeah, and and so I was like, oh, I don't want to be losing subscribers, and so I took the Christian content off the channel and put it on this separate channel. That was mostly hidden and nobody found out about.

Joey: 20:36

Because having it available online was the way that the Sunday school would access it. That's why it needed to be on there.

Josh: 20:43

Yeah, exactly, but I took it off my main channel and put it off, put it off a second one and I always, I always felt a bit bad about this because because I'd kind of been well, I'd been hiding my faith, um and and when I'd, when I put it out I'd, I'd then took them off because I'd been embarrassed, I'd lost subscribers and and, yeah, I felt bad that the subscribers were were more important to me.

Josh: 21:07

but anyway, god, god had a plan because and again through my mum, he put me in touch with this Christian ministry in the UK. So my mum my mum, had a had a contact that was working at a Christian, a Christian ministry here in the UK that was making video content, and the contact she had in this Christian ministry sent some of the videos that she'd made under this ministry to my mum, and my mum responded in typical mum fashion by sharing some of my videos that I'd made.

Joey: 21:41

Look at what my son has done.

Josh: 21:43

Exactly, exactly. I get it. I'm a parent man.

Josh: 21:52

It's normal we, if something happens, that switch turns on Sorry, no, absolutely Absolutely. And so, yeah. So she she responded by sharing some of my videos and then this, this Christian ministry were like oh, these are cool. And they got in touch with me. We hopped on a call and that that was, I guess, officially the start of of the lego project.

Josh: 22:07

Um, so, under this christian ministry, I started freelancing. I started freelancing for them, um, and over the course of that next year, so so it was it was in the end of 2021 that this ministry got in touch with me and I started freelancing for them at the beginning of 2022. I did the Easter animation for that Easter Easter of 2022, then had a break over the summer while I was in the hospital with malaria, and then, once I was out of hospital with malaria, I started working on the Christmas story, freelance as well as my finals, because this was my final year of school. So 2022 was a slightly crazy year for me, um, but yeah, yeah.

Josh: 22:50

So I was freelancing with this ministry for a year and then, at the end of that year, I was like, okay, well, I, I don't want to go to university straight away. I was planning on going to university in South Africa, but I don't want to go straight away. So I mentioned this to the ministry that I'd been freelancing for and they said well, why don't you come out and work for us for a year and carry on? Carry on making the Lego animations, because the Lego animations have been doing so so well under this ministry and it was. It was some of the best content that they'd and most popular content that they'd made them in a while. Um, and so they invited me to come out to the uk and start working for them for a year, and then the plan was I'd go back to south africa study the plan, the plan, the plan exactly yeah

Josh: 23:37

um, study architecture or product design something like that back in south africa, um, but the plan was my plan and not God's plan and I got out to the UK, back to the UK, at the beginning of 2023 and started started this job really exciting making Lego animations with this Christian ministry for what I thought was going to be a year. I started it within two weeks, literally two weeks. I I knew that I was not going back to South Africa and that this, this was God's plan for my life, and I phoned up my parents and was like how were you so confident?

Joey: 24:15

How did that happen?

Josh: 24:17

Because I was just thinking what else do I want to do with my life? Like there's, there's nothing else that I personally would want to do with with my life, and God has given me this such unique and honestly incredible opportunity to be doing literally my perfect dream job. I'm not going to turn that down. I'm not going to do it for a year and then go back. It was just, yeah, as I said initially, just thinking well, I was planning on going to university, but then I'd want to come back and do something like this after university.

Joey: 24:54

Why not just stay on? Just stay doing it, yeah.

Josh: 24:58

What's the point of university in that case? So yeah, anyway, I phoned up my parents and was like I don't think I'm coming back to South Africa anymore. And they were like oh yeah, we knew that, we knew you weren't coming back.

Joey: 25:11

Wow, which was so, so funny, but also such apparent moment yeah, and like a, like a confirmation, you know, like a confirmation for you as well, wow, wow, so, so, yeah, so we're in 2023 right now, in the beginning of 2023, that that I started started working for this, this christian ministry, full-timetime, and over the course of 2023 we made.

Josh: 25:34

so I made two animations freelance with them. Over the course of 2023, we made another five together and then at the beginning of last year so at the beginning of 2024 we realized that for the Lego project to really grow, really expand because we could see a lot of potential for it, but for it to really grow and expand, we needed to move it out of of this ministry, which was a business, it was a profit structure where we were selling the videos, but that wasn't really working, and so we realized we needed to move it into a non-, into a charity here in the UK. And so for a lot of last year, since pretty much April, may time last year, I was working on setting up this charity for, specifically, the Lego project, and at the end of the year, last October, the charity was approved, and so now we have GoChat studios with the goal of making the bible brick by brick, and that is how this, this ministry, was formed wow.

Joey: 26:40

so for for folks that are not, well, you know it's funny. So this we have the, the video interview that we're doing. Uh, there's going to be an audio podcast as well. And then this this might air on our FM radio, right, our terrestrial radio, so my rain goes radio, for those tuning in, which might still happen, right, people might tune in in the middle of this. I want to give the website, because we haven't said it. We've said the name, but not the website, which it's easy to remember Gochatterstudiosorg, gochatterstudiosorg, and that's that's probably the best place for people to go to do. You want to take a moment now to give any other contact information, channel information? We'll repeat it again, but let's just take a moment and give the relevant information or channels.

Josh: 27:27

Yeah, sure, sure. So, as, as you said, our website is go chatter studiosorg go chatter studiosorg. Then if you want to get in touch with us, you can get in touch by email and that will be info at gochatterstudiosorg. That's info at gochatterstudiosorg. And then we're also on social media. Go subscribe on youtube again gochatterstudios on youtube. And on instagram and tiktok, again go chat studios. Just search up go chat studios, you'll find us excellent, excellent.

Joey: 27:58

So we've been talking about it, we've been seeing it from afar, but, josh, I think you have some things to show us, some of the actual hands on what you guys are doing there at go chatter studios. This is probably one of the parts I was most excited for for our video interview. What, what are you, what are you going to show us today?

Josh: 28:21

so I will start by showing you this massive set that I have right next to me. That's amazing.

Josh: 28:27

So this, this is the set, and you're going to get my head cut off for now, but that's worth it, because you can see the lego and that's what's important yeah um, so this, this is the set that I built at the the start of this project, when, when I moved back to the uk in 2023, because I knew even even at the start, I was like, okay, well, even for a year, I'm going to be making making bible animations, and pretty much every bible animation that I make is going to have some kind of town scene and it's going to have some kind of landscape as well. And so I built this set as basically a covers all bases that could be used and reused and repurposed for every animation that I made over the coming years, and that's exactly what it's been used for. So this, this town scene, for example, this has been used and repurposed and rearranged. The house has been rearranged for every single town scene that we've used which which roof?

Joey: 29:25

which roof did you break through in the paralyzed man? Do you remember?

Josh: 29:29

so it. It wasn't one of these roofs that that was physically broken through okay the house. The house that I used was this one, so this was the exterior house that I used, but then I made a custom, custom built okay, specifically for the breakthrough that needed to be a bit bigger, and and was was slightly customized so that, so that it had the, the few parts that that fell through, um, amazing, and and also the, the other.

Josh: 29:57

The other thing with with my animations is you'll you'll probably notice that the, the outside houses are a lot smaller than the interior sets and and that's because it's it would just be too many bricks to build the houses.

Joey: 30:12

Is that like a plant creeping up the side of the tower there? Is that what that's supposed to be? I think you look at this one.

Josh: 30:22

There's plants creeping up the side of the tower. What was really fun about building particularly this town scene was I did a lot of research into first century Israel culture what the houses would have looked like back then, what kind of details would have been on the roof. So, for example, you can see here and where else over here as well, you've got some beds, some mats on the roofs. Oh, and here as well that's probably the closest You've got some beds and mats on the roofs because people, people lived on their roofs, like their roofs was a another room of the house. Essentially gotcha you also got.

Josh: 30:57

You also got some nice scrape lines on the tops of a lot of the houses, and a lot of the houses are kind of multi-story, um, with stairs going on the outside. So you can see, you can see, here you've got, you've got stairs going leading up to this upper room in this house and then again over here, the synagogue. This was built pretty much ground up from some ruins in Israel that I found pictures of online, and so it's very accurate to what a first century Israelite synagogue would have looked like.

Josh: 31:31

And again, as you can see in the background, we've got some more, some more landscape yeah, that's mountainous areas really cool the mountainous area again, I was looking up what the kind of cliffs and the mountains would would have looked like in that area, um. So, yeah, this, this set, has been incredibly, incredibly useful over the past two, two and a half years now, um, and, as I said, I've used it in every single one of the animations that that we've made so far. So if, if you look through all of our all of our animations since the start of this project so not including christmas and easter, but all of the animations since, you'll be able to spot parts of this set in every single one of them that's amazing.

Joey: 32:13

Oh, man, that's so cool. Thank you for showing that to us. And you know, again, you know the credit goes to the Lord, but I hope folks listening realize the amount of work that went into that. I mean, I don't know that I ever thought I would say, oh, and here's a? Um, archaeologically, historically accurate lego set of israel, like that's amazing. That's amazing how god led you to do all that.

Joey: 32:41

And it comes through in the videos. You know, again, I, I, I, I'm, I'm put on the spot here, man, I should have seen them all. You know they're not that long, but but I have more to look forward to, I guess. But the ones that I've seen, man, they are so what's the word you could just tell. I mean, they're so thought out, they're so prayerful, they're so scriptural, they're so good. I mean, they're so good really, and not just because you know you can't buy me lunch anyway, you're very far away, so it's not to get, it's just for people listening. I mean, man, they're going to see it. I suspect many folks are going to watch them.

Joey: 33:17

Let me ask you something else. Kind of jumping around here a little bit now, kind of towards the middle of our time together. I've got some notes here, some websites open. The other thing that I noticed is there seems to be a sort of a poetry rhyming structure to it. Uh, is it the same voice every time? Tell us maybe a little bit more about, uh, how the story's put together and now, at this point, maybe some of the team as well, tell us about that, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Josh: 33:47

so. To start to start with a bit of the process and the story behind it, um, behind each animation yeah, the, the script and the story is always the first step of every single animation we make, because that is the most important part of the animation. Sure, the the lego is really cool and making the lego look amazing is an important part of the animations, but the most important part for us as a christian ministry is making sure that we are accurately relaying the Bible stories and, as I said again earlier, bringing that true message, that true gospel message and the meaning behind each of our stories into the stories and into the videos that we're making. So the script is always the first stage and we're very, very blessed to have an incredibly talented, incredibly gifted scriptwriter and poet and voice artist on the team called Rachel Hood, and since the Christmas story she has done all the scripts, all the narration, all the voiceover.

Joey: 34:48

So she actually writes the stories the rhyming the scripts.

Josh: 34:52

I guess I say lyrics.

Joey: 35:01

Because it sounds very sing-songy.

Josh: 35:02

It was very it's very enjoyable to listen to, not just to watch but to listen to. Yeah, no, she, she. I mean again, it's another amazing example of of god's really really blessing and gifting someone and them using their gifts, her using her gifts that God has given her for his glory. And yeah, so it's a real, real blessing to have her on the team and she does an amazing job at taking each Bible passage that we do and then turning it into a really accessible, really engaging and then rhyming script as well, and so, yeah, it's such a blessing to have her on the team.

Josh: 35:32

So that's always the first step of the animation and I tend to work with her a bit on that process, particularly because sometimes there's things in the script that, as she's writing them, may be harder to turn into Lego animation or wouldn't necessarily flow as well in a video visually. So I'll work with her a bit in that process to kind of finalize the script and make sure that it's going to it's going to flow well as an animation and not just as a script, and and then once, once the script is finalized, I'll go through and plan um, plan out the animation, plan what sets I'm going to need to build, what, what the different scenes are going to be and I'll start. I'll start by thinking okay, what parts of this set?

Joey: 36:21

can I use?

Josh: 36:22

for the animation. But then if there's, if there's sets that I'm going to need to build on top of that, then I'll start building those sets. So say, for example, you can see behind me creation. It was the animation I've just finished. You can see the set for creation behind me, which is a completely new custom set that I had to build specifically for creation. Again, another, another set piece that I show you here is the boat, the boat from jonah, and again the, the whale as well so both of those were custom.

Joey: 36:52

Those were from the ground up, yeah yeah, from the ground up.

Josh: 36:55

So no, no instructions or anything. Um, both both custom designed specifically for for the jonah animation can we see uh the whale a little bit.

Joey: 37:03

Uh more front and center because there's like, uh, you know I'm, I'm in, in in learning about you guys. Oh no, in learning about you guys, I've I've heard some of the lingo. You know the smooth face and the brick face, and I mean there's a lot of different things going on there. Can you give us a tour of the design of this a little bit, please?

Josh: 37:23

yeah, sure. So I think the the first thing to start with is that everything, everything is built built outwards. So usually when you're building a lego model, uh, typically you're going to have like two by four blocks, one by two blocks, whatever it is, and you're going to build it start. We'll start with the base plate and you're just going to build up, and that's that's how a lot of this model was built. It was just built built up from the base plate, stacking plates and bricks and and so on on top of each other. This model was built completely differently. Every single face is is built outward. So you'll see studs here and studs on the outside here, studs in outside here, and basically I started with this model and and with all animals I build.

Josh: 38:04

So one of the one of my favorite things to build, other than castles, uh, back in the day was was animals and nature related stuff. So whenever I'm building an animal, I always start with the face to to get the proportions right. So with with the whale, I started with the face. Figure out okay, how, how am I gonna? How am I gonna create the, the look of the whale? How am I gonna create the, the look of the whale, how am I going to create the curves of the face? And I was, I was searching online for for parts in this blue and this white and found that you got, you got this slope piece, um, which if I uh, actually I'm not going to take it off because otherwise the whole whale's going to fall apart. Um, but but you can, you can see, you can see this slope piece.

Josh: 38:44

I'll move it a bit closer yeah I see um and and this, this slope piece, came in in both blue and white which is what I needed to create this, this shape at the front of the whale, um, and then, and then, it was just a case of okay, next, next, figuring out the positions of the eyes so I've got. I've got these two main slope pieces. Then let's figure out the positioning of the eyes.

Josh: 39:05

That's the the next most important part in terms of creating the proportions of the face yeah and then figure out how the mouth is going to work, because this was the whale for jonah.

Joey: 39:16

It needed it had to articulate yeah, I've got my jonah character.

Josh: 39:21

Um, right here, there we go.

Joey: 39:23

Here's the, here's the Jonah character, and it had to be able to fit the Jonah character inside the mouth, and then you built a set of an interior of a whale also, yeah, which is separate. That's amazing.

Josh: 39:36

Exactly. And then, once the face was kind of, once the face is kind of down, it was relatively easy to just kind of taper off that shape to the back and then create a tail with some hinges so that I could, I could animate the movements of the fins. And again you've got, you've got the fins on the on the side, which may as well, so they can all be animated Again.

Joey: 39:59

This is one of those. This is one of those. Yeah, yeah, this is one of those things where each one of these pieces and how'd you design this and what pieces do you use maybe you know maybe we'll do down the road lego series how to build this thing, but, um, so many questions are coming to my mind. I'm trying to write some down as well. Um, I forgot man building the whale. Maybe learning how to build the whale. I don't remember that part. Um, I know something I had written down here as you started talking about the process how long does it take from beginning to end, from concept to publishing the animation?

Josh: 40:39

yeah, yeah. So so from beginning to end, it takes on average about two to three months, from concept to finished animation. And just to finish the, because I just remembered where we were. Oh sorry, sorry From the whale, but just to finish that and bring in the rest of the team.

Josh: 40:59

So once I finish building the sets like the whale I'll then go on to the animation process, like the whale, um, I'll then go on to the animation process and it's a cycle of setting up a scene, then animating and setting up the next scene and animating and so on, and that's generally the longest part of the process. And once all the animation's done, then I have a, an editor on the team, uh, called josh manley, who puts so another josh is very confusing with a small team having two out of three people both called josh. Anyway, um, we've got used to it by now, but, yeah, um, so so josh josh works on on editing the animations. So he, he takes all the clips that I send him, puts them all together, he adds rachel's voiceover that she's already recorded, then he has music and sound effects. Uh, he does all the complicated edits, like for the whale had to remove the stand that was held up on I saw that bring that and just bring the whale back into scene.

Josh: 41:51

I was, I was animating it on this stand, moving it along on this stand, so this, the stand, had to be edited out, yeah, in in the final footage, and so. So, stuff, stuff like that he does. And then he'll also make the social media posts around, uh, around, promoting each of our animations, um, and, and then the. The final, the final member of the team is is our other animator, amy, and she essentially does the the same thing as me, um, so she'll, she'll work on animations at the cycles of setting up scenes, then animating them, setting up the next scene and animating them. And we, what? What we do as a, as a team, is we work on separate projects as animators. So I, while I've been working on the story of creation, she's been working on the prodigal son, and so that's so smart, so nobody's waiting.

Joey: 42:41

There's always something in Exactly.

Josh: 42:43

Man, you guys got this dialed in.

Joey: 42:46

That's really smart.

Josh: 42:48

So, yeah, that's the team at the moment, the whole three of us. So myself, amy and Josh, do you anticipate as well as people like Rachel and others who do freelance work for us. So Rachel's not full-time, but very, very, very key member of the team.

Joey: 43:07

Do you anticipate that the team's going to need to grow as the the um you get further into the bible?

Josh: 43:13

yeah, oh, absolutely gotcha, and that's that's very much the plan, because it's it's the. The speed that we can make animations is proportional to the number of animators we have gotcha and and so it's. It's very much the the plan that, as this project continues, we'll be increasing the number of animators, so that we can then increase the number of animations that we're releasing, do you think I don't know if this is one in the same you'll bring in other builders, or you think you'll be the one building all of it?

Josh: 43:42

I think I'll be the one building all of it. So so, partly because, as the project goes on, there's going to be less building to do like with this set, not gonna have to rebuild that again, um, but also also because the the lego skill that god has given me is a lot rarer and and it's also a very unique style. So so this is something you might not know about about lego, but it's the same as with any art medium um, you have painters. Every painter has a completely different style, and it's exactly the same with lego. Every, every lego artist has a completely different style. And so if, if I brought in another lego builder into the team, they'd have a different style, um, and that could be good. But I think I think there's value in in keeping a as an overall style for our animations, for the whole project. That makes it recognizable, that that makes them stand out, and so I think I will probably end up sticking to being the only builder for for the animations that's interesting.

Joey: 44:45

That's really, really interesting, josh, I can't believe it. We're kind of getting towards the end of our time together and I know there's two things for sure I want to cover, which is upcoming animations, where people can donate, support, give all that bullet point information I wanted to talk about or hear about what's kind of like the main mission and vision. Right, what? What's the mission? You know, and and we talked before, it's those kind of two branches. So I want to end with those two things. One last thing before we get to those final two things uh, they're kind of I can't lump them all into one question. Okay, first question that it could be a very brief answer the minifigs. Is it mostly just mixing and matching? Is there any painting or customization?

Josh: 45:34

yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's mostly just mixing, matching, um, the. The furthest we go in terms of, in terms of painting customization is, uh, I'll take. I'll give you the goliath figure, for example. Um, so this is, this is our figure for goliath and this, this torso here that is used to to give him his height. Let me find a another lego minifigure to compare. So this is the usual lego minifigure and this is goliath. Um, and the, the torso is from hagrid, from harry pot Potter. Yeah, and what what I've done is is erase the, the printing, so he does have his like his cloak or whatever it is.

Josh: 46:11

So I've erased the printing to make it plain and then to be able to use it for for Goliath. But but yeah, it's very much a a case of mixing and matching different parts from different characters and finding ways to creatively reuse different different parts. So a lot of the characters are from Star Wars, from Lord of the Rings, from the Hobbit, that sort of thing.

Joey: 46:32

That's so cool, okay. And then this gets to the next part of the question, which I can kind of bundle up. What would you say to any kids that want to build their own Bible Legos and start to, just for their own sake, right, just to enjoy, just to learn? And again, the second part of the question is a little silly on purpose, and we also want to be careful speaking about companies and speaking well of companies. But the silly part of the question is do they just buy their Bible sets from Lego, or or, or? What can kids do um with this idea that you've given them?

Josh: 47:07

yeah, yeah, of course. So lego. Lego doesn't sell any bible sets themselves, but the great thing about lego is that you can do whatever you want with it. It's it's up to your imagination. And so what I'd encourage children, family teenagers that are listening to this, I just encourage you to go for it, get out your Lego collection and start being creative, because that is what Lego's for. It's for being creative. Um yeah, they make. They make the sets, but but it's the purpose of Lego is is to get you being creative and to get you thinking outside of the box and make your own thing. Um so, so get out, get out your Star Wars, get out your castles and start turning them into Bible scenes, because, genuinely, you can be using any bricks to create whatever you want.

Joey: 47:56

So cool, so cool man, thank you. So I want to start to land the plane here in, like I said, giving people the information on what's coming up next and how they can support this ministry and this project. So, as of recording, we're in, we're in early february, as of recording yeah, that's right.

Josh: 48:15

so so, as a recording, I have just finished the story of creation, as I as I mentioned, which is very, very exciting. It's been a this one has been a six month process six days, but a six month process. Okay, but that's that's. Because of the whole charity setup over over the past few months, it's it's taken a bit longer, but yeah, I've been working on creation for about the past six months and it it was, it was finished at the beginning of last week. And Creation the story of Creation, will be releasing on our website, on our YouTube channel, on the 5th of March, so in just over a month from recording date, just under a month even from recording date, march 5th, for Creation, that's the March 5th, or 5th of March if you're from Europe 5th of March 5th of March.

Josh: 49:08

So, yeah, creation will be out fifth of march and after creation, as I said, my, my colleague amy, has been working on the prodigal son and now, nice, something that I don't think we've particularly mentioned in in this podcast yet but is worth mentioning now is the fact that we are a fully crowdfunded project so all of our animations are made completely available, completely for free, for you guys to watch and download and use in in churches and sunday schools, in christian ministries.

Joey: 49:37

Yeah, that is all, completely for free, and that goes into that last question.

Josh: 49:41

Yeah, and that goes into that last question. And that's that's because we are a crowdfunded project, and so if you want to help support the creation of our next animations, you can go to our website gochatsstudiosorg and you can donate towards the funding of each of our next animations. So we're currently still in the process of funding the Prodigal Son, so if you want to help fund that, you can go to our website and start donating towards that.

Joey: 50:11

Oh, and then I see a funding soon.

Josh: 50:14

Exactly. Then, once the prodigal son is done, we will be on to funding the book of Ruth. Once the book of Ruth is funded, we will then and I'm very excited about this, so get excited as well. We are doing a three part series of the book of Exodus, which is going to be a huge amount of fun. There's going to be some crazy scenes in that. I'm looking forward to doing the party of the Red Sea and all the 10 plagues, but yeah, that's kind of a bit of a forecast 10 plagues in Lego, interesting it's going to be so much fun.

Josh: 50:43

It's going to be so much fun, it's going to be so much fun, interesting, and so that's a bit of a forecast of the immediate future of this project.

Joey: 50:51

Yeah, and thank you for that. I mean that was kind of like a behind-the-scenes exclusive, because on the website it only goes so far as Ruth. So only our listeners and viewers. You know what's coming after Ruth, so that's why you got to tune in to God's Way Radio and listen to the podcast produced in part by God's Way Radio. Hey, just a little plug there for the ministry here, and I really wanted to give you a chance to again speak to church leaders, listening how they can use your resources, what's available, what's not available, what's required if anything and then also talk about the evangelistic side of the ministry yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely so.

Josh: 51:31

As I briefly mentioned in in that last section, all of our resources are available for free. All of our videos are available for free on our website. It's very, very easy to go to our videos page. You can go to our videos page. You can search up our the various different animations that we have and then you can go and download them. All you need to do to download them is just enter your name and email and check a box to say that you're going to follow our terms of use, and that's all you need. All you need to do to download them. You don't need to sign up or anything, it's just name and email.

Joey: 52:02

Great, yeah, and the terms of use are pretty standard. You know, don't use it on your own social media, don't make money off of it, that kind of stuff yeah, exactly exactly that.

Josh: 52:11

So, so it's not at all a complicated process and we're not asking you to sign up to a subscription or anything like that. Um, it's, we want to make it as simple and as easy for for church leaders, for children's workers to be using our animations, to be downloading them, and, of course, if you don't want to go to our website, you can always just use them off YouTube, go to our YouTube channel, check them out there, but they will be available on our website earlier than they are available on YouTube.

Joey: 52:38

Oh, interesting, so that March 5th date was for the website for creation.

Josh: 52:42

So for creation it's for both, but sometimes so website for creation. So so for creation it's for both, okay, but sometimes so say, for example, easter's coming out, coming up soon, easter's going to be, easter's already available on our website, but it's only going to be released on youtube a couple weeks prior gotcha gotcha, so it depends on the animation, depends on the animation, um, but yeah, yeah, the.

Josh: 53:02

The idea with these resources is that you can use them to support your ministries in whatever way. Really, the great thing about Lego is that it is such a good way of engaging children and captivating them, because the thing with Lego is it's something that already is emotionally connecting with them. They already love Lego, they already are engaged when they see lego, and so by using lego to tell bible stories, you already have a higher engagement rate and you already are captivating and helping the children to to actually listen and actually want to listen. So they're not going to think, oh no, it's bible time again. They're going to think, oh, lego, lego, I want to listen this is what are we doing with labels.

Josh: 53:48

Yeah, exactly, exactly, and so it's such a great way of engaging children, engaging youth and engaging people of all ages yeah, to be honest, because who doesn't love like, yeah, um, with with the bible, with the gospel, which I think is such an important thing these days?

Josh: 54:04

Because certainly I don't know what it's like for you guys in the States, but certainly here in the UK, where we're based, there's more and more people that just have no idea who Jesus is and have no idea of even basic Bible stories like David and Goliath and the story of Jonah, the story of Jonah. And so that brings me into the other aspect of this ministry, which is the evangelistic side, and using the fact that we're using Lego as a way of drawing in people who haven't come across these stories, who maybe are less familiar with Christianity, drawing them into the gospel, into the Bible, using the medium of Lego Because, again, when they're scrolling online, when they're scrolling through their social media feeds, they're not going to think, oh no, it's Bible, let's not watch this. They're going to see the Lego and they're going to think, oh, this is so cool.

Joey: 54:58

What is it?

Josh: 54:58

Yeah, yeah, I want to watch and this is exactly what we've seen on our social medias. We've seen on our social medias is we've seen so so many comments over over the past few months now that we've set up as a charity, of people commenting on our videos and saying, hey, I'm a muslim, hey, I'm an atheist, but I really, really enjoyed this content and they're watching it anyway, and that's because it's lego, because it's engaging, because it's engaging and because it's connecting with them, outside of the fact that it's it's a Bible story.

Josh: 55:27

And so that then helps connect them with the Bible story.

Joey: 55:31

Yeah, oh man, Joshua, I'm so excited and again, if people didn't catch it, they didn't make that connection we had the opportunity to meet on the ground level of what God's doing. You know, at the beginning, at the inception, like you said at the time of this recording, it's been not even a year, I mean just several months since you've established the charity and really pushing forward full speed ahead. So we're so excited to have found you. I hope many, many people will learn about you through this and then tell others about Go Chatter Studios. So, Joshua, by God's miracle, I covered everything I wanted to cover. We've heard so much about Go Chatter Studios. We've learned about you. We've got to see behind the scenes a little bit. Is there anything else you wanted to share or mention before we end our time together?

Josh: 56:28

I think the only thing that I'd want to end on is that I would just really encourage people going away from for the gifts that God has given you and to trust that he knows what he's doing in your life and to be seeking ways of using those gifts and using the situation that God has put you in for his good and for his glory. I think one final story that I'll share and this is something that we kind of touched on um earlier is is that when, when I first started making bible animations, as I said, I took them off my channel because I I was embarrassed, I I didn't like the fact that I was losing followers, losing subscribers, and so I took them off my channel. But now, when, when I started working for the ministry in the UK full-time, I was like, okay, right, god, I'm going to give this another go. I'm going to start posting the videos that I'm making with this ministry to my own social media channels and just see what happens, because I'm not going to be creating any other lego content. This is going to be the only content I have to post, so let's just start posting it and see what happens.

Josh: 57:46

And, god, I'm just gonna trust you, even if, even if I'm a bit scared of what might happen to my following, um, and so I started posting the christian content that I was making on my, particularly on my instagram, and at the time on my instagram, I was on about 2000 followers and over the course of the and that's, that's 2000 followers that I built up over about two years of being on Instagram, over the course of the next six months of posting just Christian content, for the first time I had reached 50,000 followers just just from, just from posting the Christian content and videos were getting millions, literally millions of views, and it was just such such an eye-opener to me that I had been like I'd been scared to post my Christian content and to to put my name out there for God.

Josh: 58:40

Um, and it was just such an eye-opener that I I should have, I should never have doubted, I should never have been scared for one second, because as soon as, as soon as you're taking that step for God, god is going to, god is going to meet you, he meets you there and he's going to carry you through and take you above and beyond what you could ever have expected. So I'd really encourage you. If you're holding back from sharing your faith or if you're scared to do so, just trust that God is going to meet you there and he has a plan for your life, yeah.

Joey: 59:16

Oh man, joshua, I'm so glad that you ended with that. It's an encouragement to me, it's an encouragement to anyone listening or watching, and all I can say is I look forward to speaking with you again. I can't wait to see what God's going to do and, who knows, maybe God's Way Radio and through our radio ministry or through our podcast, can be part of the journey and check back in from time to time and hear and see what's going on. Joshua, it's been a great time.

Josh: 59:42

Thank you so much, jerry. God bless you, god bless.