Animation update: 28 Young men by Walt Whitman

 Six years ago, I made an animated short with my writer pal Michael Z Keamy. He narrated. We had planned to do the poem live action at a secluded part of the beach in Provincetown but getting 28 young guys to splash around naked on the beach in Provincetown is harder than one might think. I decided to animate it instead. 

The original version was OK. Extremely limited by my version of Cinema 4D and my computing power at the time. Turns out having 28 young animated men isn't all that easier to get on video. 

Now using Blender and my older but still powerful 10 i9 processor imac, it was possible to improve on it. The structure is the same but the sets are better made and there are actually 28 men and the woman in the poem in the animation now. The people look less cartoon-y and all the characters move, something I could not accomplish before without crashing the computer. 

It's coming along and I feel I am doing more justice to the poem and Keamy's narration. 

28 Young Men - animation

28 Young Men, a short poem by Walt whiman read by Michael Z. Keamy and animated by me (Behemoth media).

The project has been several years in the making. Originally we wanted to do live action and scouted and filmed several locations. As time went on, it became clear that getting 28 make men to splash around on a beach for free was not really a realistic option. We needed a secluded place and no trouble from local authorities. So animation was the voice in the end.

The men barely move, (and no there are not really 28 of them but I am not exactly Pixar so we never see them all at once), the idea being they are frozen in the woman's fantasy as she imagines herself moving amongst them. The beach and house are loose representations of Newburyport where Keamy grew up and had specific locations in mind. So the advanced filming came in handy when it came to making the sets.

The water effects were done with X-particles for Cinema 4D and look pretty good to me. they are not meant to look like real water and match the cartoon look of the ocean waves.

Warning, I guess... cartoon nudity.