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. 

Festival nomination: Cask of Amontillado

 My animated Poe tale, "Cask of Amontillado" was nominated a the Cannes Shorts festival! 

You can see the film on Youtube, be sure to subscribe and like the film! 

Cask of Amontillado Selected for a festival you all can watch!

 So the SF indie fest/Another Hole in the Head has selected my animation "Cask of Amontillado" for their online Mr. Holehead's Warped Dimension Film Fest! 

The festival is the 24th-29th of September 2020 and films will be streamed to a registered Zoom audience. I may also be there in a window for a post screening Q&A live in ZOOM. The link about will have all the pertinent information if I miss posting anything here.

Tickets are now available! Click to see the link and buy tickets. My movie is being shown  on Saturday, September 26 9 a.m. PDT. It costs 10$ for a day pass to the festival so you cna see other things as well! Which is noon eastern Standard time - I think. 

My trailer for the festival:

Cask of Amontillado trailer from Vincent-louis Apruzzese on Vimeo.

Animation: The Cask of Amontillado 2020 6 minutes 14 seconds

After about two years of preparation and animation my animated "The Cask of Amontillado" is finished. Mike Luce is the voice of Montresor and Michael Z. Keamy is Fortunato. I tried to be the voice of Montresor at first but I was beyond terrible and Mike Luce kindly redid that audio for me. I went with human like animal characters this time instead of cartoon humans. I thought it might work better and give me more options with the animation plus added some symbolism. 

I used Cinema 4D as I am not ready for something like this in Blender yet. It was edited in Final Cut X and I did not use After effects for the compositing but used Apple's underrated and often ignored Motion software instead and it worked out great. The animation still has some issues I am having trouble with, such as decent walk cycles and some of the movements were not as smooth as I would have liked but overallI am very happy with the results. Nothing is ever perfect, is it? The settings were a long haul to make as the upper and lower catacombs are huge and cavernous and lit by torches. The sound was a little more complex as I had to record a bunch of foley and sound effects to flesh out the sound and add more atmosphere and detail to the short. 

During the final edit, I noticed a bunch of things I had somehow missed, one was the wrong source files were used for a sequence which made the image looked pixelated and another was a terrible clicking noise during a dialog scene I can't believe I had not heard during the editing process. My excuse is that the noise here is non stop between the construction and the fact I am not in glorious isolation but home with my spouse which does not give me the solitude I need to work efficiently. Constant distraction is death to a project like this so I am glad I was able to get it done and be happy with the end result. 

I have two posters ready in case I decide to enter it in some festivals. I have had the luck to be in one or another over the last 6 years so having promotional stuff ready is a fun way to tie up a project in a nice bow. 

If you like the animation, tell me! Like it on Youtube and pass it around so maybe it can get some attention and love! 

The Raven selected for the Sunrise Film Festival !

Good news! My short animated film version of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven was selected for inclusion at the Sunrise Film Festival.

I now have to send a screener, most likely on a data drive to them and see if it gets selected for an award.

It was a very nice holiday surprise to be selected! A big thanks to Michael Z. Keamy for reciting the narration for the film for me!

The Raven - a new short animation

Based on the poem by Edgar Allen Poe, this was my longest single animation to date at 9 minutes. Michael Z. Keamy did the narration and it was a solid 5 months of full time work to get it done.

This time out with the addition of simple sub-titling tools added to Final Cut X, I was able to add French and English captioning so more people can watch and understand it. I tried for a sombre but realistic tone to present to poem. I have seen a few animations that go wild with abstract shots and ideas but I wanted this to keep grounded. It was a challenge to make something that is basically some depressed dude yelling at a bird in one room for nine minutes until he passes out! I started with longer, lingering shots and then made them shorter and shorter as it progressed to give it a faster pace while keeping the ideas of grief and depression to the forefront.

Year end review 2018

Another year has come and gone and while it was not financially profitable, I did get a lot accomplished. Normally I make two animated shorts per year, this year I made ten. Ten! Two were gothic horror, The Tell Tale Heart and Dagon. I also remade and updated In the Future with Nostrodumbass and made 5 Dramatic Readings with Charles Websters Billingsworth the 3rd shorts. If that wasn't enough, I made two very short Filthy Sheep animations. Tell Tale Heart premiered at the Another Hole in the Head festival in San Francisco. I drew a bunch, took some photos, and did some graphic design for new and old clients - but not enough to pay all the bills again this year. Finding decent, paying clients has become pretty impossible recently - which is discouraging. I have been thinking of doing a Patreon funding page... but I have no idea how to do or promote that in a way that will make it likely to pay off.

I have started 2 new projects already for next year. The Raven will be my longest animated short at 9 minutes. Narrated by Michael Z. Keamy and I hope it will bring all the stuff I have learned in such a productive year into a really top notch production. Dog & Weasel is the other project. It is a cartoon about a weasel (Jon Bellette) and a dog (Watson) who fight an alien robot invasion. The idea is sort of a Warner Brothers feel and I have plans for a couple more adventure where they meet other cryptids like Nessie and Bigfoot. Mike Luce is set to do the voice of the weasel and I think it will be pretty damn funny.

 

Misc things included reworking my web page and logos. I also updated my CV of course and my updated demo reel will go up in the next few weeks. I have some potential jobs lining up for next year but one thing I have learned the hard way is to not count my chickens before they've hatched.

On top of all this, I decided to, maybe, publish a book of short stories. In the 90s I wrote up some tales mostly based on real life things that happened to me mostly to entertain a friend who was terminally ill. Over the years I refined them and showed them to a very few other people, a couple of them thought I should collect and publish the stories. I guess I'm finally getting around to doing that. Maybe.  I did set up the book and design it in the beta of Affinity Publishers as test project so it would be a shame not to anything with it, I guess.

Tell Tale heart selected for Another Hole in the head film festival!

This year, the Another Hole in the Head film festival has chosen my short animated adaption for Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell Tale Heart to be part of the films shown!

If anyone is close, please go and be sure to mention to everyone how much you love my movie! I would like to keep making them and word of mouth is about all I can afford these days to find support for them!

15th Annual Another Hole in the Head
SF IndieFest’s Genre Film Festival
November 28 – December 12, 2018
www.ahith.com

The raven - set design

Moving ahead on my next gothic horror animation. Trying for a more detailed, yet still render in a realistic amount of time look. To that end I removed a lot of reflection and the fire is an animated texture not a simulation. I also added noice to the main light to give more detail to things so i don't have to put stuff on every wall. The use of shadows also fills that space with shapes so the need for paintings and moulding is reduced. I still have t make the narrator character and his dead wife, Lenore but at lest the raven itself is ready. This set is made so I can easily make some of the walls and ceiling invisible for camera placement. There is a balcony and a street out the french doors and I think it will be snowing outside. I put a ton of work into the doorway because that is where we see the raven mostly so it have to hold up for many shots and different angles. The painting over the fireplace is temporary as it will need to be made with the image of Lenore from my model of her eventually.

The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

I am well into production of my next gothic horror animated short, The Tell Tale Heart, my second Poe story. I have plans to do the Raven at a later date, maybe next year.

This one has three characters, I cut the number of policemen in the story from 3 to 1. Makes its more do-able for me and 1 is more than enough for what happens in the story. I got some feedback on the set designs at C4D Cafe from some of the members and I think that made them much better. I kept them very simple.

A couple challenges so far have been making the floor which needed to have several floorboards removable and the thin ray of light lipping through the slightly open door on to the face of the sleeping old man. I am also having some motivation issues getting it all done. It happens - you just feel like you are screaming into the void making these things at times.

Book jacket project: Murders in the Rue Morgue and other stories

Click to enlarge

Another one to work on from a small format hardcover I have had for decades and oddly enough... never thought to see what stories were in it. There is no table of contents so I added on on the inner front flap. Page numbers to come.

I decided on a long bio for Poe on the back since giving a resumé of each story wasn't going to happen. The photo is the typical one you see of Poe. I did some retouching and restoration to it and might do a little more.

On second thought- I found the above far too banal and predictable and went for something much cleaner. Tell Tale Heart is one of the stories in the book so I went with that for the artwork which I made in 3D. I like this one much better. Numbering the table of contents on the inner flap is a challenge because they start with a one digit number and progress to three digits making it look unbalanced. I changed 1 to 01 which helps a little.

Click to enlarge

The Oval Portrait

My next project will be Edgar Allen Poe's The Oval Portrait. 

I have to make three characters but I might modify one from a Lovecraft animation to save time. No synchronized dialogue in this one but 4 set pieces I will try to make a little less detailed and easier to render. It does take place an a recently abandoned manor afterall. There won't be tons of furniture etc to make. The will be a female in a large dress as  challenge and I might try some more advanced texture painting on the people.

Of course first I have to get the narration recorded and work out more of the details with lighting and mood. So here are a few images of the sets so far. There will be the long shots of the manor (maybe a tower as well), the hallway of paintings, the bedroom that contains the titular oval portrait and the artist's studio in the tower.

Clicking on the images will bring up larger version for anyone interested. 

Edgar Allen Poe project - The Raven

I was up for a TV job that I did not get and decided that the cartoon raven is made for it, with a few modifications, would work for an animated version of the poem, The Raven. I reworked the CGI puppet and set up this little test which shows potential. I think.

This won't be done until next year I'm guessing as I am almost done with my Ambrose Bierce animation but have already started work on Poe's The Oval Portrait.

My idea is to have a series of gothic horror shorts that are not all Lovecraft and maybe tell a few more obscure stories in the genre. The Raven is far from obscure but since I seemed to be part of the way there - why not?

In case anyone is interested, here is an image of the original model which is certainly more child friendly.