VERONA, N.Y. (WKTV) - Following their hit animated debut, the animation and film studio of the Oneida Indian Nation is at it again.

The Oneida Indian Nation's Four Directions Productions has started work on its second 3D animated short-which is scheduled to be completed in 2011. As with their previous short film, "Raccoon and Crawfish," the award-winning studio is taking one of the ancient legends of the Iroquois and bringing it to life through animation.

In April 2007, the indigenous operation premiered "Raccoon & Crawfish," at the Syracuse International Film Festival. That production went on to win awards at 18 festivals around the world over the past two years, including the prestigious Moondance Festival (2007) in Los Angeles and the International Film Festival of England (2008), as well as being screened at the renowned Cannes Festival in France in May 2008.

The upcoming animated short, "My Home", focuses on a belief especially important to American Indians, the care and protection of "Mother Earth." The key characters in this animation are an ambitious but environmentally sloppy beaver and a turtle that takes her role seriously as a caretaker of the environment.

The newest animated story from Four Directions Productions will be introduced as it would have hundreds of years ago, with an Oneida elder telling the legend to an Oneida child.

"These legends are how young Oneidas have learned life lessons since time immemorial-as I also did many years ago," According to Dale Rood, studio operations director for Four Directions Productions and a member of the Oneida Nation Council, "Today, we are preserving them for future generations, as well as helping non-Indians learn about our culture, history and who we are as a people."