Animated Stormbringer, Wendy Pini and Red Sonja

My friend Mike sent this over to me and I thought it best to share it right away.

Back in her college days, Wendy Pini (Elfquest) had begun a most ambitious project of bringing Michael Moorcock's Elric to the screen as an animated feature.  She ended up spending years on this, working up concept drawings, storyboards, sound effects and music cues.  It was quite an undertaking for any studio much less a single person.  It kinda became this ongoing obsession that she eventually had to lock up and walk away from back in 1973.

View Wendy's production portfolio for Stormbringer

Wendy offers up the story of this chapter in creative life via this website as she displays much of the work she produced for this project.  It's amazing to see the breadth of talent she possessed at that young age and the illustrations for Elric as an animated piece are mindblowing.

View Wendy Pini's Stormbringer presentation.

Elric is a 'strange' sort of fantasy, not as accessible as LotRs which was quite popular in the 60's and early 70's and was later produced as an animated feature by Ralph Bakshi.  If her Elric movie was ever made I wonder how that would have changed the direction of fantasy.  If it was a high profile Disney style production (not that they would have touched this with a 10 foot pole), I think it would have been amazing.  Bakshi had more of an underground flair but I think this would have been a better direction than he ended up going with with Wizards.  But I doubt he wouldn't have given up reign on a project like that to a young talent like Wendy Pini.  Bakshi's influence would have been all over that and Wendy's concepts are too good I wouldn't' want that to be diluted or altered in any way.  If her Stormbringer film was made at the time and was successful, I think fantasy would have been less fluffy.  Moorcock's battles of Law vs Chaos and related concepts were a bit more underground even for an underground literary genre such as fantasy.  But it may have fit well in the 70's.

Alas, we'll never know but it's interesting to contemplate.

After college she ended up hanging out with Frank Thorne and dressing up as Red Sonja, though there's definitely nothing wrong with that, before moving on to her famous Elfquest.

Original cosplayer Wendy Pini as Red Sonja

Bonus feature:

Bringing Fantasy To Life: Ray Harryhausen 1920 - 2013

The godfather of fantasy special effects passed away today at the age of 92.  Ray Harryhausen, master animator and fantasy visionary, brought to life creatures and realms that are now taken for granted with today's easily created computer generated effects.  His screen creations, going back decades, have left impressions on everyone who saw them.  The creatures he created are iconic Hollywood.  Everything from undersea beasts, to marauding skeletons, to Medusa herself were brought to life with painstakingly minute movements and photographed a single frame at a time.  It would be hard not to say that he had an influence on the creators of the original Role-playing games as many of us imagined our initial battles with skeletons and ogres looking like a Harryhausen epic.  Another iconic fantasy creator has passed and will be missed but his imagination will always live on.

 

Animation Preview #1

Here's the first 53 seconds of the intro scene from my animation project Beneath the Ruined Tower of Xenopus, based on the radio play my players and I did last year.

If anyone's dabbled in animation you'll know that 53 seconds is quite a bit of work!  But in this day of digital film-making it's not as long as traditional old school painted cell animation.  I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out though I'll make a few adjustments; namely the final shot in this segment I'm going to make a bit longer.

I've got the rough mix of the sound track attached to it as well.

One minute down and twenty-nine to go!

Enjoy and feel free to comment.

Animation Background: Caladan

Here's one of the fully illustrated backgrounds featuring Zenopus' tower and the city of Caladan for the animated version of last fall's radio play.  This also gives you a general idea of the feel and mood that the background  images will have.

Again I tried to simplify and stylize the background just as I'm trying to do with the characters which is always a challenge for me but it's a great practice to loosen up my drawing style.

I've included the original sketches that started with a more realistic approach and ended up with the above image.

I'm still working on animating the final shot of the first scene but it's coming along.  I should have a clip to post soon.

Animation Character Design: Xenopus

Here are some of the sketches of my development of the sorceress Xenopus for my animated short based on the radio play my friends and I did last summer.

As with my earlier post I thought it would be interesting to show how I work thorough the character and the scene it self.

I knew for Xeopus I wanted to have a character that expressed a sinister quality and corrupted by her dark magic, but I also wanted a bit of allure to her as well.

 

I go through initial sketches just to see what I come up with and where it takes me.  Usually I know what I'm going for but actually translating that to paper can be a challenge.  I also know that in the scene she appears she will be conjuring up a demon so I wanted to express that madness of dark power.

Seeing some things I like in the initial sketches, I begin to refine these.  Feeling I had a general idea on the character I begin to refine the face a bit.

 

 I was liking where I was going with the face but had a problem with the hair.  It looked too proper.  I wanted her to be more mystical so I worked in what I thought was Kirbyesque headgear

 

I also knew that in the scene she would be studying her spellbook so I began a few sketches bringing her into the scene.  You can see I actually begin working out some of the props and action details with notes written within the sketches themselves.

A bit more revision on the clothing and I ended up here.

Animation Character Design

I've been working on the Tower of Xenopus animation project and making quite a bit of progress.  I'll be posting throughout the week and perhaps next ending with an actual thirty second clip from the narrated intro.

I wanted to document my progress so today I'm going to discuss the beginnings of my character design.

My goal was first to create a good cartoon character that would be easy to animate and position in various angles.  I began work with the characters of Slick Vinny the wizard and Geedleesmote the dwarf.

  

My initial sketches I felt were pretty good if I were to do something like a comic book but I wanted to simplify the characters even more.  I really wanted to just capture the 'essence' of the character with as few lines and possible - a real challenge for me but I think I was finally getting somewhere.

  

Here I got to just the simplified characters of Geedle and Vinny.

Below is a test "cell".

I'll be adding a bit more details to the dwarf's armor.  After working with the animation software a bit I think I'll add a bit more detail to the characters but as of now, this is where I'm at with them.

Next: Xenopus Character Design

Why Holmes' Sample Dungeon?

For those of you keeping up here at the Home Brew, you will have noticed that for the past forty-two odd campaign sessions have revolved around Holmes' sample dungeon from basic D&D rule book.

You may have also remember that that same dungeon was the inspiration for the Beneath the Ruined Tower of Zenopus radio play that we produced last year.

And now I begin work on an animated version of that same radio play which of course has the sample dungeon as the main setting.

Why has the Holmes' sample dungeon, a tiny thirty-five year old creation, been such a mainstay of my FRPG revival these recent years?

Perhaps it's because when I first opened the Holmes' basic set and flipped through the pages of the rules for the first time and I came across that crude dungeon map, my imagination and wonder and curiosity was forever sparked.

My basic set came with the module B: In Search Of The Unknown and we played the hell out of that one as I'm sure many of you have as well.  A great starter dungeon and learning tool without a doubt.

But the Sample Dungeon was a deadly maze, fully stocked with monsters, treasures, pirates, wizards tricks and traps and intersecting corridors to challenge even experienced characters and players as soon as they pass through that first four-way intersection.  It was and still is the best example of what Dungeons & Dragons was/is/could be.  It was a complete work and adventure that came in a set of rules. It has never been topped since.  The 'sample' dungeon in the DM Guide is incomplete as is the sample Haunted Keep in the Moldvay rules.

Holmes' threw everything at you to make a fun and exciting dungeon experience.  His brief and colorful portrait of the history of the tower of Zenopus and Portown with it's Green Dragon Inn and the author's permission for expansion has always made this the crossroads of that moment when the game was presented as just sit down and jump right in to one that become monetized over time.

That aside, when I was looking to get a campaign started I knew I'd be running an early adventure of come sort.  I figured B1 (ISOTU) and B2 (Keep on the Borderlands) were both probably all overplayed but Holmes' sample dungeon was just obscure enough to give folks a taste of a fun old school dungeon adventure.  I figured we'd play it out in a couple of sessions and then move on.  Little did I realize that this little sample dungeon would become the hub of a campaign that has been going on for forty-two plus sessions.  Of course I changed Portown to Caladan from Holmes' Maze of Peril, his prose story based on his own campaigns within his world where the sample dungeon comes from.

I have to say it IS my favorite dungeon.

That is why I have chosen to pay homage to it over and over again, in our campaign, in the radio play and now in the animation project because it really is that great.  It speaks volumes to what Holmes added to this hobby.

The Warlock Moving Ahead...

As  you know here at the Home Brew I've dabbled in quite a few media projects related to fantasy adventure all for your enjoyment.  From RPG aids and modules, to illustrations, to comics, pulp magazines to radio plays my interests vary widely and I like to explore them and make them available here that hopefully some of you enjoy.

One of my early loves besides comics and movies was animation. At the age of five I would draw slightly changing pictures in the corners of books to make flip-book animations.  With the release of Star Wars (episode Star Wars) and a few too many Ray Harryhausen flicks, I was inspired even more into animation first exploring animating Star War Figures for my version of Star Wars 2 and later into claymation. 

I still have these many original super-8 films stored away (I've never transferred them to video or anything though I still have a super-8 movie projector) and soon after went on to study film and animation in college.

But film and animation gave way to the bass guitar and I moved on to becoming a professional musician for 13 years and eventually found my way into graphic design.

I've always tried to keep connected to my first true loves mentioned above - a great trait that I have which I am grateful for!  So now I'm dabbling back into the long hours of animation.

So, what am I animating?  We'll for my first project I'll be animating a good ol' Dungeons and Dragons inspired cartoon based on the Beneath the Ruined Tower of Zenopus radio play we did last year.

As I work on this project over the next year or so I'll be posting sketches, stills and clips to keep you all informed on the progress of my little undertaking. I've already begun some work on it so you'll be seeing it soon.

Fire and Ice: Behind the scenes

I've always been a huge Ralph Bakshi fan. I've even loved his contentious use of rotoscope to animate his movies which he used in Hey Good Looking, Wizards, LOTR, Fire and Ice and American Pop.

One of my least favorite of his fantasy films of his surprisingly is Fire and Ice. One would think that gathering together Bakshi, Frank Frazetta and Roy Thomas would produce one hell of a fantastic fantasy drama, after-all, these three creators are seen by some to be the top in the genre at the time. Frazetta's artwork being transferred to the screen is a blast to watch but that doesn't save the plodding stereotypical fantasy story.

Teegra, anyone?

Regardless, seeing how Bakshi works his magic is quite thrilling. I've always loved the process of classic hand drawn animation but Bakshi took it one level further. Having to shoot the entire movie in live action and then illustrating it to later embed into a fantasy world has always seemed like a grand mystery. The video clip below shows Bakshi's rotoscoping process and it's quite amazing to watch:



It's interesting to note that his use of rotoscope was looked down upon by traditional animators. However, with today's use of motion capture to animate modern CGI creations like the creatures in Avatar and Gollum from Peter Jackson's LOTR, Bakshi can be thought of as a forerunner to modern-day special affects.

Still from the live action shooting of Bakshi's Lord of the Rings

Fantasy Friday

Today's Fantasy Friday brings us one of animation's fantasy masters, Ralph Bakshi with his film Wizards. Pure Gamma World, D&D, Mutant Future mash-up which no one has topped since. Classic cell animation, beautiful organic background paintings and trippy effects enhance the other-worldly atmosphere that modern CGI animation has yet to even tap.




Bakshi called this his "family film" and yes, there are elves and faeries and funny looking wizards but there is also mutant goons and Hitler and dark animated demons. It's got some pretty dark and heavy themes but Bakshi believed that kids can handle that. He felt that you didn't have to 'dumb' things down for kids (something that I tend to agree with).

I watched this again over the holidays and it's still inspiring. You don't see this type of animated feature anymore which I miss greatly.

This film would lead Bakshi down the road to his next feature "The Lord of the Rings" a year later.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

Remember when saturday morning cartoons kicked ass? Well, here's a real treat for you so go grab your bowl of cereal and kick-back!


Korgoth of Barbaria - Pilot

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