Masque of the Red Death (2025) Directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

This project was suggested to me at a showing of one of my earlier animations. I did not think I could pull it off, the story has over 1000 people and a setting involving 7 rooms of various colours among other technically challenging aspects. After reading the story a few times more I decided it could be pulled back with less people and less room and still keep the tone and message of the story intact. 

Even so, it would mean animating more characters in several shots than I ever had before and involve some animal simulations I wasn’t sure how to pull off. Poe’s wordiness and descriptions were also pulled back partly to reflect the simpler setting but mostly to reflect how bad a narrator I am. I did enhance my voice a little to make it sound better. 

I used Make Human and Human Gen to create the characters. This made it feasible to make so many and also Human Gen can add clothes you make or buy in an easy way which I really needed for this project. One thing that Blender has in abundance is reasonably priced fantastic addons so my one man show looks better, I hope, than it would have totally on my own. 

It was rendered in EEVEE and compositing and colour work was done in Apple Motion while editing was done in Final Cut Pro. 

I did have issues with Human Gen here and there. A few characters suddenly had finger rigging  issues and I wish that plugin had more secondary facial controls like Make Human. It has much better skin and hair so it’s a question of which I could get the most out of. The robed figure was simply rigged withAuto Rig pro. Something I plan to use more in future. 

Not what is next except to get familiar with compositing in Blender. I would like to use depth maps and maybe motion  maps in Apple Motion like I used to and separate elements for better colour corrections. I will try and redo some older animations I think will be greatly improved over the Cinema 4D versions and decide on a new project as I go go through all of that. 

Mobius Meadows Farmstead photos

I spent a few days in the scalding heat at my friend's farm in Vermont. One day we had an hour of rain which was a relief and produced some really cool clouds. I also got to finally try and photograph the hummingbirds and got some OK images.  

Masque of the Red Death - opening credits

Been animating a lot lately. The credits are sort of inspired by Roger Corman horror films in the 60s. As usual I am learning more about Blender with this project and just animated 6 characters in the same shot which is a record for me. My version of C4D had issues after 3 characters and this went mostly smoothly. Composing music is not my thing but I am happy with how this worked out. 

The Picnic - 5 decades of the Million Year Picnic (2021,2023) directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

 

This was a decade+ long project. Getting interviews and information was much harder than I thought. It was edited and re-edited quietly a few times: sometimes making it longer, sometimes shorter. Getting it shown anywhere was also difficult. I foolishly thought the place was such comic store legend I could get conventions and small festivals to show it. A couple a small festivals did end up showing but the place I really wanted it to play was the Brattle Theatre which is almost across the street from the store. That happened in July 2024 and those who went were good to tell me they liked it. Never got paid, sadly but at least it got it's day in that historic cinema. 

I would really love more people to see the film, the Picnic is and has been a fantastic, special place run by special people and is one of the last independent stores in Harvard Square. The original owner, Jerry Weist, was a ground breaker when he started the store and continued to lead the way when he left the store and started selling the original comic book art at Sotheby's elevating it as the original form of American art it was and is. I was the manager there in the mid-80s and still count my colleagues from those days as friends. 

Just another part of Boston(ish) history I don't want to be forgotten and I hope this makes people want to visit Harvard Square and see how wonderful this odd duck of place is and get captured by it's friendliness and charm. 

Summer reading / research - on vampires

 I often look to folklore and legends for inspiration. I listen to several podcasts about the stuff and recently read or reread some books on the history of vampires. I don't have plans to make a film or write a story involving vampires but they are fascinating and their history is mixed up with other folklore and legend. 

The First Ghosts: A rich history of ancient ghosts and ghost stories from the British Museum curator by Irving Finkel

Very interesting book talking about the translated cuneiform tablets in the British Museum that detail the earliest ghost stories. Could have a been a dry read but the author has an entertaining style and obviously loves his work. 

Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires: The Rules to Determine True and False Cases by Antoine Augustin Calmet

A 1700s discussion of all manner of supernatural phenomenon. How could I resist that title? Well, I wish I had to be honest. The chapters are usually short and have notes at the end of each but the author wraps everything in a Christian/Catholic blanket that smothers any hope of learning much about the legends of the past except the God must have approved of them or they were hallucinations or whatever. It gets very close to the real reasons people might have believed in such things but then vers off in to it's on religious mythology. It does mention some stories mentioned in the first book on this list which means those tales were still circulating 1000s of years later.

The Vampire: A New History by Nick Groom

A new book less focused on individual folklore but on the history of the concept of the vampire and how in before relatively recent times it was common to think of ghosts, werwolves and vampires as the same thing. Very well researched and makes it points with some humour and interesting asides. 

And  finally.... Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber

A book I reread or use as reference all the time, it's my favourite source for bloodsucking lore. 

 

I made this poster before I saw the film. I was inspired by the look of the character I saw in clips and since I have not done any art for months I wanted something light. Light was still challenging. This is done in vectors with Affinity Designer and I think is my best resemblance to the real person so far using that technique. I used several shots from the movie as reference and I modified the lighting for the effect I wanted. 

It's a silly thing but I am happy with how it came out. 

50 Years (2025 restored version) Directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

 Originally released in 2002 under the title "46 Years", "50 Years" is a recollection of memories and events as they relate to Ralph Hodgdon and Paul McMahon and their life-long love for each other. 

I revisited them 5 years after this was screened in Provincetown, Massachusetts and put for sale on Amazon as times had changed and the couple were able to get married on their 49th anniversary. It seemed right to do an additional interview after their 50th anniversary of the day they met and one year after they were able to get legally married. 

The restoration started in January 2025 when I discovered I had many, but not all the originals scans of the photos used in the film. My software also avowed me to take out the background music and improve the sound and more easily rework some edits. I still had the music done by David M. Puryear and was able to add it back in after the changes were made. 

Shot on Standard Definition video, before HD was a thing does limit how much improvement I could do on my own. I did clean up the titles between sections and updated the credits. I also had to take a break when Ralph got very ill and died in April 2025. Paul had passed in April 2011 and it was just too difficult work on. 

The 2020 version of the movie is for sale/rent on Amazon Streaming Prime Video.

festival BD de Montréal 2025

 I had the chance to walk around the comic book festival today for a couple hours, only the second time I was able to go. It was a little wet but still great to see what must be 2 km of kiosks promoting not just comics but the artists who make them, especially local artists. 

This is nothing like a comic con, it's much more grass roots and no one dresses up and no big studios are here promoting the latest super hero movie. Graphic novels are taken seriously here and there is a huge variety of content to see from commercially published books to those made at the copy centre to children's stories, to political tale, horror, sci-fi, slice of life, humour... you name it. 

There wasn't a lot of original artwork on sale so what i saw was really good and many artists were there in person to sell their books. Book stores and local comic book stores were well represented. I noticed there were a large number of formats being sold from limited edition beautifully designed hard covers and boxed sets to self published works. Almost no toys, movie posters or any of the other trappings of conventions now aimed at the general public over serious art fans looking to see more than just big commercial efforts. There seemed to be more English books this year but they also just might have stood out to me more since i usually don't see English books normally for sale. The people there were mostly men as these things usually are but not too much of an imbalance. The artists were really diverse - racially, age-wise, and it was a very open and welcoming and atmosphere. English and French were pretty evenly balanced as well. 

Game: No Man's Sky made by Hello Games

 

I was given No Man's Sky as a gift (thanks Mike!) after being very curious about it for a long time. One question I had about it was how "combat heavy" it was and most of what I saw about the game seemed to suggest  - a lot of it.  That turns out not to be the whole story. One reason I was given this game is it has a "creative mode" which lets you keep out of multi -player, combat and the ins and outs of trading and building things and lets you just explore and enjoys the created worlds. Totally my kind of thing.

I have learned how to play much better over the last 100 hours of play and really like it! I made a base near a lake and then put an underwater base in that lake that I can travel back and forth to. I did go on a couple "missions" that didn't involve contact with other players and I found them... interesting. I came across an abandoned ship underwater and went on a search for it's crew and I started to look for a lost alien named "Artemus" and  another named "Apollo" related to to finding the first alien but stopped actively pursuing it when I was told I needed to make space in my base and look for technicians etc to continue the search. Maybe someday. I completed... ? The Atlas station mission only to find it can't be completed definitively. 

Since starting a few months ago the game has had 2 huge updates, one for a mission I wasn't interest in and another mission involving collecting fossils. I wasn't interested in the mission group thing but I could still collect fossils, make and display specimens on my base and found that super fun. Hello Games seems pretty motivated to keep the game growing and changing. 

Problems? Sure there are. It can be buggy. Sometimes I sigh in and my character drops from orbit back to the place on the planet he was last. I don't like there doesn't seem to be a way to manually save or that while you collect ships to fly around in you really need to buy a freighter to keep them in. I was hoping to have several launchpads on my home base to pick and choose the ship I wanted but it doesn't work that way. There could be more building options and I think they will get added over time and some of the creatures and places are repetitive even though overall, the scenery is pretty stunning and fun to explore. The space station look amazing but inside they are all alike. I am sure these are from issues stemming from a game that is generated on the fly as you play. It takes a few minutes for the creatures to appear after landing. I also found some of the rooms in my underwater base had fish swimming freeing around in them.

None of this takes away from the game as I play it. maybe if I were interacting with others it would be annoying or hinder game play but it's easy for me to ignore since none of those things will affect my outcomes. If you are looking for multi-player action and combat or running a small village on strange planet, those options are open to you but I can't speak to how well that works or how involved it is. I am happy playing as I do! 

The Twleve (restored 2006 documentary) 2025 directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

 Originally released in 2006 on Amazon and then updated several times later, this documentary is about Boston’s most diverse dance club, open from the 70s to the 90s. Three floors, a piano bar and pool tables in the basement, a new wave punk dance floor and then a classic disco dance floor… plus in good weather a roof deck with a grill! The entire LBGT+ community was welcome and mixed together as well straight people and a few other minorities that were not welcomed in other, straighter bars at the time. 

This version is recut, new graphics, where possible, with better sound and upscaled to HD. It was filmed on zero budget with an old video camera and a mono microphone from the Radio Shack so I’ve tried to improve it where possible but tech is only so magical, even these days.

The goal is to give people who were not able to go to this wonderful place and a sense of what it was like and to remind the world of Boston’s gay history and a world that is now gone and lost.