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. 

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. 

Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death - Prospero

 

This was a bear to do, The coat is not from the plugin I used to make the characters I spent 30 hours trying to attach it so it would animate with the figure. In the end... there is a way to do in the plugin itself which takes 1 minute. God damn it! At least I know about this feature and use it in future. It needed mnor tweaks after it was done but that is often the case. 

Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death

 The robed figure. Already rigged for movement, though the eyes will need better control. I haven't gone much further with this lately. I haven't had the energy to figure out what needs to come next. 

Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death

 I have started preproduction for "Masque of the Red Death" based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe. This has some new challenges for me such as there needs to be many more characters in some shots than usual. I keep it to three as a rule to not overtax my computer but since switching to Blender and having my MAC in 10 processor i9 with a good graphics card I feel I can push farther. For the crowd scenes I might use 2D characters for the background and have several 3D ones who can have more movement. I was hoping I could find some free or cheap medieval costumes but not much much so far. I will have to wing it. 

This image is the opening shot after the title sequence and when the narration will begin. It took a few weeks to design and put together despite using some great plugins to lessen the work load. HunGen for the bodies, Fire_fx for the bonfire, Auto building for the houses and castle, Alt tab easy fog 2 for the atmosphere, and Fauna sketcher to ad crows in the sky and flies (not visible in this shot, for the bodies. The fog rolls forward and the trees have a slight breeze blowing them. Depending on how the narration works out this could be several shots or one longer tracking shot. This is straight from Blender so there will be some colour grading etc in post eventually. 

One big challenge, other than my dumb debutant Blender mistakes, was placing the flickering light for the bonfire. making was easy enough but when I placed it in the bonfire it wasn't visible and the render time went up 4 times! I am using Eeevee to render as I did with my first Blender short "the Hound" as its pretty good now and getting better but also fast. This shot takes 30 seconds to render (with the light issue 20 minutes!)

Next step is the model the interior castle rooms where the story takes place. it's 7 rooms, identical save the last one but in different colours. I will need to learn to making some blood effects for this one and continue to work on getting better performances from my characters. Hopefully I can get together with the voice actor for the narration sooner than later as not having it slows down production. 

This was a suggestion from some people and I assumed the story was beyond my skills for years but I think I might succeed now and upon writing the script I realized it was not as long as I thought and got some good ideas on how to economize the plot to fit a short animated film.