This project is a short animated film concept, working title Phantom of the Prairie, inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s work, like No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian. The film is told as a campfire story as a cowboy tells the horrific tale of a creature that stalks the desert, killing and eating lone travellers and leaving towns and communities abandoned. The storyteller reveals this story to be nothing more than a legend until the creature is sitting right across from him, waiting for the fire to die.

This short will be 2D animated and in line with it’s distrubing subject matter, I want the visuals to be rough and textured. I want to create an otherworldly and surreal landscape with vibrant and contrasting colours, which is a departuture of the sun-bleached bright pastels of western feature films set in the daytime.

I am continuing my work on this project, and I will be creating more concept artwork and visual development for this project.