A two-time Academy Award nominee, Barker is an animation filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

In April 2010, he was hired as a creative consultant by the NFB to oversee its animation projects from the Canadian Prairies, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

[10] The film is divided into episodes, with each sequence triggered by mental associations of typical grade seven classroom objects, such as science posters, dioramas and papier-mâché volcanoes.

The director had initially contemplated also using CGI animation but abandoned the idea out of a desire to achieve an “organic hand-made feel” for the film.

Barker was committed to completing the film with a much shorter production schedule than his previous works, which averaged “a disturbing and embarrassing 8½ years per film.”[5][11] In November 2015, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that If I Was God... was one of 10 films—and two NFB productions—shortlisted for a possible Oscar nomination, however the film didn't receive a nomination.