#faneffect

Screen shot of the movie screen at Thanksgiving Point MegaPlex theater (KellieAnn Halvorsen)

'David' offers fresh take on biblical animation

LEHI, Utah -- When Hollywood is taken out of the equation, great animated storytelling is possible. "David" is a breath of fresh air in animation quality, character development and plot.

At the red carpet world premiere at MegaPlex Theatres at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah, Sunrise Animation Studios co-founder Jacqui Cunningham said "they used 3D animation, hand-drawn by some of the best animators in the world." The studio used live actors to voice the roles with no AI.

Biblical story decades in the making

The movie tells the rise of the biblical character David, who started as a shepherd and became king of the Israelites. The story began more than 30 years ago in the mind of the director.

"I saw the majesty, beauty and bravery of nature in South Africa and knew God was there. It was through this feeling I wanted to tell the story of David, who lived bravely through his faith," said Phil Cunningham.

Though the seeds of "David" started 30 years ago, it took almost 20 more years before the first script was written by co-director Brent Dawes.

"I was inspired by Phil's passion and conviction about this story; I had to help," Dawes said on the red carpet.

It took another 11 years before the finished product came to the screen, which included years of fundraising, casting voice actors, script rewrites and animating.

From 'Jungle Beat' to David

Phil Cunningham said the main goal was always the "David" film, but they needed to get other projects off the ground first. The small Sunrise Animation Studios, based in Cape Town, South Africa, is as far away from Hollywood as you can get. But it has one of the most popular franchises airing on Netflix, "Jungle Beat," with a TV series and two movies. Which helped fund Cunningham's passion film.

Jacqui and Phil Cunningham on the Red Carpet at World Premier of "David." (KellieAnn Halvorsen) "Once that was in place, we were able to really get moving on 'David,'" Cunningham said. He and his wife, Jacqui, also credit partnering with Angel Studios, based in Provo, Utah, with getting their latest film to the global stage.

Top-tier animation meets strong storytelling

The animation for "David" is top-notch, with more than 400 artists coming from other major studios like Disney and Pixar to work at Sunrise. But more importantly, the storytelling is excellent.

The Sunrise team took great pride in having well-rounded characters and a strong plot. It draws viewers in from the beginning and is inspirational.

While faith is the center of David's story, the writing does not hit viewers over the head with religion. Those who have faith will feel it; those who don't will appreciate the message of perseverance and seeing a bigger picture.

Family-friendly with minor criticisms

It is worth watching with the whole family. There are several tense scenes but they should not cause distress or nightmares for younger children. That said, the movie is two hours long, which may be an issue for children under eight to sit for so long.

The attention to detail in even the smallest flower petal, the script writing, the voice acting and the plot are all strong. One criticism: The skin color is a bit whitewashed.

While the animators made the characters slightly darker than Central or Northern Europeans, they don't have olive or brown complexions. Also, the lead character, David, is depicted with brown hair and highlights as opposed to dark hair which people of that time period would have had.

But this is nitpicking an otherwise brilliant film with a great creative team. The movie hits theaters nationwide on December 19, 2025. RELATED You can hear all the interviews with the directors, producers and some of the voice artists on the podcast FanEffect with producer KellieAnn Halvorsen and independent podcast host, Heather Kelly.

When I first edited wikipedia, my edit actually got taken down (probably because I did not cite and source a credible article but I learned this time). For my wikipedia project, I edited a topic called the Fan Effect. This effect is a psychology effect that says that as more things are learned about a concept, the longer it takes for a person to retrieve it. I first became interested in this topic as I was searching for stubs to work on. I couldn’t find any I really liked so I thought, “Wait, how come I’m not researching on my own major?” So, I researched psychological stubs and randomly clicked this one. It was mostly empty and only had one sentence in it. I searched for articles on the Fan Effect on PsycArticles - a psychology database with a lot of articles about experiments and information about psychology. I first made a small edit by adding a sentence in and then I edited the original sentence by adding more details to it. Afterwards, I went to research more information about the articles and actually made my edits. I added a section on how the Fan effect works in the brain and a section on some possible theories behind the fan effect. I also added in a free use picture of a network of links that represents the fan effect idea.

My article was not marked unimportant by wikipedia users. It was difficult writing and researching my article because wikipedia does not allow any original experiments as part of the encyclopedia. I ended up combining many sources together to write the ‘Plausible Theories’ section and tried my best to sound neutral while writing. I had to go back and check my post many times to make sure that my writing was still there. The only edit someone made was to make some of the coding more concise. Other than that, no one has done anything else to my post and I just made a small grammar correction to it today. Although I did not receive any feedback, perhaps someone will find it and correct something I wrote. Another problem I had was that some of the experimental writing was very dense and difficult to read. It was demanding to decipher these words and clear up what the author wanted to say about the topic.

For this project, I learned how to write in a neutral, and easier tone for people to understand what I want to say. It was difficult for me to understand the articles, but eventually I got the gist of the points made in the articles and wrote what I thought was a simpler version of the articles. I also learned how difficult it is for people to accept an article on wikipedia and that it is not completely sourceless. Although there could be many articles that contain incorrect information, most are sourced and we could use those sources to our advantage. Although wikipedia is not completely credible, the information contained in it could be good for background knowledge before putting someone in a completely boring topic that he doesn’t want to research. It tells people if they are interested in a topic or not and its references can be used to extend research in that area.

wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_effect

Database: http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycarticles/index.aspx?utm_source=ljxpress&utm_medium=display_email&utm_campaign=psycarticles