Clay Beabout is lucky enough to have several Directing mentors for his film including, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (Little Miss Sunshine) for Live Action and Gil Kenan (Monster House, City of Ember) as his Animation Mentor.

Clay had the opportunity to work with all of his Directing mentors this December. Working with Gil Kenan on animation proved to be extremely inspiring for Clay. Clay sketched some of his characters including the animated dog currently known as CHARGER in his film. He also got an opportunity to work in Photo Shop for the first time and to color and create in the program. This was very instrumental in shedding light on a whole new possibility of animation for Clay.

His session with Valerie and Jonathan included some faux swordplay to prepare for Clay's live-action sword play with the evil Lord Vater from his film, "Deep Blue."