The Mad Violinist (an unfinished project), part Four: Style

In working on this project, at one point I began to experiment with ink and white gouache to see if I could conceive the artwork as depicting a silent black-and-white film. The following images I derived from my morgue that I'd assembled to help decide and fix the style of the film. I did several paintings in this style focusing mostly on people. I included a lot of images of women although they don't really figure in the story, but I did want to use them in the dream sequence.

This is based on a portrait of Nijinsky, the Russian ballet dancer. I thought the protagonist in the film would look something like this.

This image reproduces a poster of drag performer Joey Arias. I often salvaged posters for collage material from the street. I really liked the mood of this image and how dramatically it crops the face.

This portrait based on a promotion still of silent screen actress, Theda Bara, I liked the contrast and the expression.

A publicity still for Louise Brooks in "The Canary Murder  Case" provided the inspiration for this image.

This is a fashion photo from the Nineteen fifties. The stance of the model seems suggestive of a visual story.

I've always been inspired by the Russian designer Erte', so I have often referred to his work.

Another Erte' design, I love the Grecian sleeve and tunic form, used here for great effect.

The Mad Violinist (an unfinished project), part Three: Planning

This is the third posting about this unfinished animation project I started back in the early Nineties. Here I'll share with you some of the sequences of the film that I began to plan out.

This is a sketch of an image I planned to use to first introduce the violist. The idea is the protagonist hears music and is clearly annoyed. He looks out his window and sees the shadow of the violist cast on the building opposite.

Here are notes and thumbnails I jotted down to begin thinking through the process of the story. In them the protagonist attempts to sleep and begins to dream. The camera pulls away from an overhead shot of the man sleeping. As the sleeping man recedes architectural columns and other features like stairways appear, getting more elaborate. On the right I began to jot down ideas for a narrative, although I really had no intention of including any voice overs:

"It is past midnight and I dread the music. I hate my neighbor with a passion that haunts me when I wake and torments me so I cannot sleep. I am not a vengeful man, yet the evil music insinuates itself into my life so that I am desperate to free myself from it. Every night like clockwork it pierces my dreams and wakes me mercilessly. Twisted and jarring music, haunting and compelling are the only way to describe the horrific effect it has on me, perverting my dreams with its own reality. I cannot sleep. He robs me of my rest. I must fight him for my sanity. I must destroy his vile instrument. The music of Ehric Zahnn must be no more."

Here are a few more notes indicating a transition during the dream sequence when a clock face becomes superimposed by the sleeper's face. At another point I wanted the camera to zoom backwards through a door-less hallway of columns, each set from a different era and design. Eventually they would devolve into a Dali-esque open field dotted with columns and ruins at odd angles.

This is a sketch for the final scene where the protagonist bursts into the garret of the violist and discovers the man playing to a broken window behind which is a swirling maelstrom. To the left is a metronome which I wanted to be the size of a wardrobe, perhaps indicated by super-imposed images. I was also inspired by Van Gogh's painting of his room in Arles to develop this scene.

The Mad Violinist (an unfinished project), part Two: Characters

There are primarily two characters in Lovecraft's story, the protagonist and the violist. At one point he does describe a conversation with the building owner, but only as a reference point, so I never really considered it a part in my story. But I didn't want my story to be only about the protagonist and the mad violist, I wanted there to be something more that would point to the early surrealists. One of my favorites was the photographer Man Ray, who often created arresting imagery with simple visual juxtapositions that illustrated how we recreate our worlds with words and phrases that do not translate logically to visual mediums.

For example, I was always taken by the idea of the relationship between a musician and their instrument as a love affair. Man Ray illustrated this in a famous portrait of a nude woman viewed from the back. He'd pasted two "f-holes" in black paper on her back to play with the connection between the human form and how stringed instruments are shaped. F-holes are not what you are thinking, but are sound amplifiers which are very recognizable on the front of most stringed instruments. I played with this notion in relation to the violist by drawing him as seducing a woman who was interposed with the instrument.

In this last image, I was playing with the idea that the protagonist might see the violist as an idealized figure, more cartoony and sinister. I have to admit I was inspired by Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, as it was interpreted as a cartoon show. There is a skeleton character that I believe had spirally eyes, which I modeled this character on.

The Mad Violinist (an unfinished project), part One: Cityscape

This was an animation project that I've thought about off-and-on-again over the past many years. What I'm presenting here are mostly sketches and ideas, notes I've taken and the general mood that I hoped to create with my story. I was originally inspired in 1990 when I first read H.P. Lovecraft's short story, "The Music of Erich Zann" and most of these sketches are from that early time.

I had a definite visual story that I wrote out as an outline and then created images to match the story. My story deviated from the original story, including a dream sequence suggested by the weird music the protagonist hears playing above him in the garret apartment.

I was greatly influenced by Lotte Eisner's book "The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt" which focused on Germany's silent screen history. The only films I had viewed from that period were "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Metropolis", which I believe is reflected in the imagery. Also, having recently moved to Seattle, I intended to include an iconic tower. I vacillated between wanting to include the Eiffel Tower which would place the story in Paris, France or including the Space Needle which would place it in Seattle.

I ♥ H. P. Lovecraft

I knew about H.P. Lovecraft by the time I started working for Collectors Bookstore in the Pike Place Market during the early Nineties. Collectors was a small store down just one of the ramps to the lower floors and across the hall from a Chinese cafe that served dim sum. It was run by the same couple that own Golden Age Collectables, the comic book store that has been an anchor store in the Market for many decades. On Collectors's shelves held a wide range of books including many regional titles, cookbooks and a children's section, but they specialized in hardbacks and special editions of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror books.

This is where I learned how popular H.P. Lovecraft's stories are. We barely could keep hardback editions, from the notorious publisher, Arkham House, in stock, they were so popular. Of course, nowadays, years after role-play gaming has brought much of our American fantasy literature alive for younger generations, as well as, film and other popular media, Lovecraft is mined by such popular properties like South Park. 

I mention my stint at Collectors because it was at that time that I decided to read some of his stories, which I'd avoided partly because I didn't want to believe what every fanboy (and quite a few fangirls, too) I'd talked to said, "he is one of the best, most influential horror writers of the twentieth century. And his monsters 'kick ass'!" A friend offered to lend me his cherished paperback, collecting short stories by the author. And so, I read.


Lovecraft is not a terribly easy-to-read writer, although his style is similar to many writers who've taken a page from Edgar A. Poe or the lesser known Sheridan Le Fanu; but Lovecraft manages to ease you into his ideas so that by the end of the story you are truly startled by what happens and he does it often without being explicit about what does happen. In other words, he enlists your own imagination against you, so you fill in all the details he leaves out. For example, my favorite story in the collection I read (I don't remember the collection's title now) is "The Music of Erich Zann" which involves little more than the interactions between a lodger and his upstairs neighbor, who happens to play the most strange music at night, keeping the protagonist awake.

You can imagine there will be an intense final encounter with the mysterious musician, but I won't elaborate more, because the story really stuck with me and it is certainly worth tracking down and reading. Anyway, I soon outlined a sequence that I still think would make a wonderful animated film. In researching this post, I stumbled upon a few attempts by people recently who do just that. Nothing notable enough to link, but if you're still interested, a search will get them. Anyway, as I come across my drawings for the sequence I will make mention of them.

Now for the above illustration, which unfortunately is something of a spoiler if you haven't read the story it's from. I don't remember the story name, so perhaps you will be surprised anyway. I barely remember the story, but I think it was about an old abandoned cathedral on the top of a hill. A man sees lights in one of the cathedral towers and later decides to investigate. The protagonist climbs to the top tower where he encounters recent evidence of someone performing an occult ritual, burnt candle wax and charcoal markings on the floor. One of the tower windows is boarded up and the cracks filled with fabric. Upon breaking back some of the boards the protagonist encounters a creature that carries his likeness, but is naked, has wings growing out of his back, his hair is frizzed out and his feet are blackened, as if he was hit by a bolt of lightening.

My attempt to research this story didn't elaborate further, but short of rereading all of Lovecraft's writings, which I think I would enjoy, I still do not know if the seraphim-type creature is unique to this story or occurs again. I was so taken by Lovecraft's description of it, that I had to draw my version of the moment before the protagonist opened the shut window. I had a distinct impression that the wings were not typical or traditional, i.e. bat-style or bird-style, but more like fans or fins. After reading these stories I began creating my own impressions of his creatures, based on dreams I had featuring them. I will have to dig around to find them before I can post them here.