Sunday, January 15, 2012

H P Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time

For those of you familliar with the works of H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time" may be one of his more well-known tales. It's a strange story, more sci-fi than horror, and concerns a peculiar way of time travel. The hero, an academic from Miskatonic University, Arkham, gradually goes mad as he starts to realize that his mind and body was kidnapped during a span of several years, and used by a strange alien race known as the Yith, or "The Great Race", who came to Earth in its infancy.
Here they waged war against other, more horrifying aliens; the flying polyps! After conquering their enemies, the Yith focused on exchanging minds and bodies with representatives of the superior lifeform in different ages of Earth's history. Lovecraft's story jolts from the early prehistoric, to (then) present day, and the far future.
You may not be too surprised to hear that it's never been filmed, although I know the Lovecraft Historical Society did an audio play recording of the tale. One reason is probably that the strange creatures in the story would be difficult to portray, without looking too silly. That, however, was never reason enough for me to not do a particular project, so a while ago I started planning a short animated version called "The Rise of the Yith". I built a Yith puppet and did a test animation. My pal Daniel Lenneer found out about this and revealed his plans to make a film version of the very same story. Thus we decided to join forces and attempt an amateur version of "The Shadow Out of Time". Daniel did the live-action bits, and I produced the animated sequences. So far it's shaping up pretty well. We still have a bit to go, but here are some stills from a few finished scenes for your enjoyment (we hope).