perihelion

Nick Cross (2012)

For more information on this and other films by me, visit: My website: http://nick-cross.com

WTF did you just watch? Perihelion is a sort of animated tone poem. It is a short film that toes the line between narrative and non-narrative, essentially having no real beginning, middle, or end.

Visually, I was heavily inspired by the work of a number of German painters from the early 20th century. Notably: Otto Dix, Richard Oelze, Ingrid Griebel-Zietlow, Rudolf Schlichter, and Max Ernst, as well as Francisco Goya. This is sort of a tribute to the work of these artists living in a time of Fascism and impending war, which really informed their work in a distinct way.

Nick Cross

Story, art, and animation by Nick Cross (nickcrossanimation.com)

Audio samples courtesy of Freesound.org

Special thanks to alphadog, szuhogyisziszi, Sampleconstuct, Timbre, martian

Animated with a Cintiq 20 WSZ using Toonboom Animate

Backgrounds painted in Adobe Photoshop

Compositing and effects were done in Adobe After Effects

Editing was done in Final Cut Pro

Completed March 23, 2012

Will Vinton (1985)

Join Mark Twain on his airship to meet Halley’s Comet!

The Adventures of Mark Twain is a 1985 American stop motion claymation fantasy film directed by Will Vinton and starring James Whitmore. It received a limited theatrical release in May 1985.

The film features a series of vignettes extracted from several of Mark Twain’s works, built around a plot that features Twain’s attempts to keep his “appointment” with Halley’s Comet. Twain and three children — Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher — travel on an airship between various adventures.

The concept was inspired by a famous quote by the author:

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”

Twain died on April 21, 1910, one day after Halley’s Comet reached perihelion in 1910.

Included are sketches taken from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Mysterious Stranger, The Diaries of Adam and Eve (Letters from the Earth), Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, and, a rendering of Twain’s first story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. References are made to his other works, including The Damned Human Race.

This animated film was shot in Portland, Oregon.