The Conqueror Worm

An animated version of Edgar Allen Poe's poem. Angels watch a puppet show which is interrupted by the arrival of a giant worm. An allegory about death, set to the song "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• animation
• puppets
• animals
• music
• death
• horror
• gothic

[whrelp]

did you make this yourself?

[pose2pose]

Yep--all by my lonesome...well, technically, Edgar Allen Poe wrote the poem and Camille Saint-Saens did the music, but I did all the rest.

[nitesho]

Marvelous work..Is it cut out work,or animation by computer?

[pose2pose]

Both--I drew the body parts by hand, scanned them in, then cut them out and colored them in Photoshop. Then I animated them in Adobe After Effects, in the cut-out style.

[weelittledragon]

Hey, wasn't this music used as the intro to Jonathan Creek?

[TheMorrochben]

very well done, my one question is (as someone who has memorized this poem and written essays on it) where was the phantom? the phantom is very important for the theme, it represents mans constant pursuit of happiness that can never be satisfied, man is the crowd who 'seize it not' because we can never lay our hands on happiness however much we try. Other than that, it was excellent.

[TheBonaparteReport]

this is splendid. Really matches the music, like a darker fantasia.

[pauldonovan3]

Reviewing this video for English 102 class at Bristol Community College with Prof. J. Grandchamp.

Very good job with the animation. It was well thought out. It takes alot of planing, and tedious, intricate work to make something like this.

Certainly reminds me of work done by Luis Castanon from Brainwash Studios. Check out his work at

ponorka.eu/html/animace/1/swf/­vegetar.swf

[moltoallegro19]

Very well done! Love Poe, love Saint-Saëns and I love your artworks!

[kalacs32]

The coffin-theatre idea was really creative! :)

[StitchedDolly]

That was beautiful

[RavCro]

Wonderful!!!

[egdeltur666]

This is totally kick ass, by the way.

And look at that, you incorporated the whole poem, metaphor and all, without utterin a word of it in the film. Take that, book nerds.

[egdeltur666]

@kreativekool Oh no, some class asking you to over analyze it to death?

Sure, it's about the inevitability of death and all that, but you should tell them this:

"The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Alan Poe is, at it's heart, a very literal piece which fortells the death of mankind by the gullet of the immense star-borne monstrosity (the worm) and child of Ogdru Jahad as Nyarlathotep has lead men on the way to destruction with his myriad masks. I don't know what the angels mean."