Zippy's TreehouseDaniel in the Lion's Den · An animated short for kids
Written, cast, directed, and edited by one member of our team in five days, entirely in Pray Production Studio.
Press play. As the film runs, the studio follows along with the exact shot being made.
Six minutes of animation. Five days. One person.
No animators, no render farm, no studio pipeline. One member of our team took the story of Daniel from a blank page to the finished film you just watched, using nothing but Pray Production Studio.
For scale: custom 3D animation is typically quoted at thousands of dollars per finished minute and delivered in months. This film cost about as much as a week of coffee runs for a mid-size ministry team.
Five days, shot by shot
Here is exactly how the week went, with real frames from the project. No steps skipped, nothing staged after the fact.
Script, casting & scenes
The week starts with words, not software. The story of Daniel gets framed inside Zippy's Treehouse, a lemur librarian who pulls the book off the shelf and reads us in.
Paste the script into Pray Production Studio and it breaks the story into scenes and shots automatically. Then the cast gets built once: Zippy, Daniel, King Darius, the jealous leaders. From that moment, every shot knows who its characters are.
Image generation
Every shot gets its frame. Babylon's palace, the marketplace, the prayer closet, the den. 342 images were generated across two days, several takes per shot, and the best take was picked frame by frame, like reviewing dailies.
Because the cast was locked on day one, Daniel looks like Daniel in every single take. That consistency is the difference between a film and a slideshow of AI pictures.
Video & audio generation
The frames come alive. 249 video clips were generated from the selected images: lions pacing in the dark, the decree slamming onto the wall, Zippy swinging through the treehouse.
Voices, narration, and ambient sound are generated in the same workspace, so the den growls and the treehouse hums before the edit even starts.
Editing
The final day is a pure edit day, and it never leaves the browser. All 84 shots land on Pray Production Studio's built-in timeline: trims, music, mix, and titles in one pass.
One export later, the film is ready for YouTube, the church app, and the Sunday morning screen. No Premiere, no render queue, no handoffs.
This was directed, not prompted
Here is a real shot from the project: Scene 11, Shot 3, the night Daniel keeps praying. In Pray Production Studio's editor you stage it like a film set: drag Daniel, the Jealous Leader, the door, and the camera on a floor plan, choose a 24mm lens and shallow depth of field, and generate takes of that exact composition.
The stage you setThe frame you getSC 11 · SH 03Every shot has an address
Scenes and shots are planned and numbered like a real production, so an 84-shot film stays organized instead of becoming a folder of loose clips.
24MM · SHALLOW DOFReal camera language
Lenses, depth of field, two-shots, over-the-shoulder. The tools speak film, which means your team learns direction, not prompt tricks.
5 TAKESPick takes like dailies
Generate several takes per setup and choose the best one. Taste stays in the loop; the machine just does the rendering.
Why any of this matters
Kids remember what they can see
A flannel-graph Daniel is a lesson. This Daniel, asleep on a lion's mane while morning light pours through the grate, is a memory. That is the whole point of the tool: giving your ministry the power to make scripture unforgettable.
"My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions."Daniel 6:22
Same Daniel, every single scene
Cast a character once and they stay themselves across every scene, every episode, every style. Which means Zippy's Treehouse doesn't have to be one film. It can be your weekly kids series, with the same host and the same look, produced by your own team on your own schedule.
What a kids ministry could ship with this
Everything below is the same workflow you just watched, pointed at your curriculum.
A kids series with your own host
A recurring character like Zippy who opens the Bible every week, matched to your curriculum calendar, in a style your kids recognize instantly.
60-second verse videos
One verse, one vivid scene, one takeaway. Batch a month of them in an afternoon and run them in every classroom and on social.
VBS and event openers
A themed opener that makes the room gasp on day one of VBS, Christmas, and Easter, without booking a production vendor months out.
Clips parents actually play
Send the week's story home as a short clip so the lesson gets a second showing in the minivan, not just the classroom.
Your team could make the next one
We will walk your kids team through exactly how this film was made, live, on this project, and map it to your curriculum. It takes 30 minutes.
Pray Production Studio is made by Pray.com.
What churches ask us first
Do we own the videos we make?
Yes. Everything your team creates in Pray Production Studio belongs to your church, for services, social, your app, and anywhere else your ministry reaches.
Can we match our ministry's look and characters?
Yes. You choose the visual style (this film is 3D animation; anime and claymation are on the same menu), and you build your own recurring cast, just like Zippy and Daniel here.
What does it cost?
Plans are monthly subscriptions with generation credits included; this entire film used about $800 of generation. We will size the right plan for your ministry on the walkthrough call.