Founder of 4th Moon Productions turns lived experience with sickle cell disease into an animated storytelling platform designed to help children see possibility beyond diagnosis—and prove there is an audience ready for more rare disease stories.

For filmmaker, producer, and entrepreneur Antoinette Mooney, storytelling has always been more than entertainment. It has been a way to make sense of lived experience, create connection, and help people see possibility where circumstances may suggest otherwise. 

Mooney is living and thriving with sickle cell disease, a rare inherited blood disorder she has navigated since childhood. Those experiences—and the imagination, resilience, family support, holistic wellness practices, and faith that helped shape her understanding of herself beyond illness—eventually became the foundation for her newest creative venture: A Hero’s Voice. 

The animated series begins with A Hero’s Voice Presents: Tooty, Our Sickle Cell Warrior, a story inspired by Mooney’s childhood experiences living with sickle cell disease. But Tooty is only the beginning. 

Through A Hero’s Voice, Mooney and her company, 4th Moon Productions, Co., are building a larger storytelling platform designed to feature adults living and thriving with rare and chronic conditions who are willing to share their experiences in ways that can encourage younger generations navigating similar diagnoses. 

The vision is simple but ambitious: help children understand that while a diagnosis may influence their journey, it does not have to limit their identity, imagination, dreams, or future.

From lived experience to storytelling model 

Mooney’s path to A Hero’s Voice has been shaped by her background in journalism, television, film, community engagement, and health advocacy. 

Her professional journey has included work across media and production environments, interviewing notable figures in entertainment and public life, producing independent film projects, and working within communities affected by health disparities. 

Those experiences converged with something much more personal: her own childhood. Rather than creating a story focused solely on the medical realities of sickle cell disease, Mooney wanted A Hero’s Voice to portray the whole person. 

That intention led to the development of Tooty’s world through three central guides: Mind, Body, and Spirit. 

Together, they help provide a framework for exploring the emotional, physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions that can shape a child’s experience of living with illness. Creating that holistic storytelling model required more than creative imagination. 

During development, 4th Moon Productions intentionally invited voices from within the sickle cell and wellness communities into the creative process, including leadership and medical expertise from the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, along with a Doctor of Wellness, to help inform the development of a storytelling framework grounded in lived experience, wellness, health communication, and authenticity. 

The goal was never to create a medical lesson disguised as animation. The goal was to create a story children would actually want to watch—while giving families, caregivers, advocates, and healthcare professionals new ways to think about the full experience of living with a chronic or rare condition.

Building the project with emerging creatives 

A Hero’s Voice has also been intentionally developed as a pathway for emerging creative talent. 

Throughout the project’s development, Mooney has worked with college students, emerging filmmakers, writers, artists, and recent graduates, providing opportunities for young creatives to contribute meaningfully to the building of an original intellectual property. From early writing and story development to character design, visual development, marketing, and production planning, these emerging professionals have helped move A Hero’s Voice from an idea rooted in lived experience toward a tangible animated world. For Mooney, that approach is part of a larger philosophy behind 4th Moon Productions: meaningful stories can create impact both on screen and behind the scenes. The people represented in the stories matter. 

So do the people being given opportunities to help create them.

The Kickstarter is about more than production capital 

This September, during Sickle Cell Awareness Month, A Hero’s Voice is taking another major step forward with the launch of its Kickstarter campaign. The campaign begins with an initial goal of $50,000, part of a larger effort to crowdfund approximately 10% of the project’s $2.5 million production budget, ultimately working toward $250,000 in community-backed production capital. 

But Mooney is looking at the campaign as more than a fundraising mechanism. It is also an opportunity to answer one of the most important questions facing mission driven entertainment: Is there an audience ready to watch, support, share, and grow with these stories? 

Every pledge, campaign share, website visit, conversation, and new supporter becomes part of demonstrating that audience. The campaign is therefore designed to accomplish two goals simultaneously: raise production capital and build measurable audience engagement around the larger A Hero’s Voice series. 

For future collaborators, distributors, funders, healthcare partners, rare disease organizations, and entertainment companies, that engagement can provide something powerful—evidence that audiences want stories centred on people whose experiences have historically been underrepresented in children’s and family entertainment.

Tooty is the first hero, not the last 

The first chapter centres on sickle cell disease because that is where Mooney’s own story begins. Future instalments of A Hero’s Voice are intended to introduce additional rare and chronic disease champions—adults who are living, growing, achieving, creating, leading, and thriving while navigating conditions that younger viewers may also be learning to understand. Their stories will not simply focus on what they have endured. They will explore who they became. 

By connecting children with stories modelled after people who have walked similar paths, A Hero’s Voice hopes to create something young viewers can carry beyond the screen: belief that their futures can still be expansive. 

For Mooney, that is the heart of the project. It is not about pretending difficult experiences do not exist. It is about making sure difficulty is never the only story children are given about themselves. 

Join the Journey Supporters of the rare disease community, families, healthcare professionals, advocates, entertainment professionals, educators, philanthropists, and anyone who believes children deserve to see more possibilities reflected back at them are invited to help move A Hero’s Voice forward. 

Back the Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aherosvoicetootyscd/a-heros-voice  

Explore the world of a hero’s voice: https://www.aherosvoicetootyscd.com 

Backing the campaign helps provide production capital. 

Sharing it helps grow the audience and joining the journey helps demonstrate that rare disease stories do not belong on the margins of entertainment—they can help build new worlds, inspire new audiences, and give the next generation of Heroes a voice.

About Antoinette Mooney

Antoinette Mooney is a filmmaker, producer, entrepreneur, storyteller, and Founder/CEO of 4th Moon Productions, Co. Her background spans journalism, television, independent film, community engagement, and health advocacy. Living and thriving with sickle cell disease has deeply informed her approach to storytelling and her commitment to creating media that inspires hope, human connection, representation, and possibility. 

She is the creator and producer of A Hero’s Voice, an animated storytelling initiative beginning with Tooty, Our Sickle Cell Warrior and designed to expand into additional stories featuring rare and chronic disease champions.

About 4th Moon Productions, Co.

4th Moon Productions, Co. is a media production company focused on developing film, television, digital, and experiential storytelling that inspires audiences to believe beyond circumstance. Through original content and strategic collaborations, the company works to create opportunities for underrepresented stories, emerging creatives, and mission-aligned partners while building sustainable pathways around the intellectual property it develops. 

Media / Partnership Inquiries: Antoinette Mooney Founder & Creative Director, 4th Moon Productions, Co. Creator & Producer, A Hero’s Voice Website: https://www.aherosvoicetootyscd.com

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