Stunning Steampunk Animated Short Set Aboard A Victorian Airship

The inspiration for a film can come from pretty much anywhere—a momentary idle thought while out jogging or on the train, a conversation overheard, an in-depth discussion. Or it can come straight from another creative source, like a song, which was the genesis behind this short animation Eye Of The Storm. After listening to his friend’s (musician Ben Lovett) album, the director Chris Alender was asked if he would like to make a video for a track, and the song called Eye Of The Storm immediately struck him as cinematic. The song itself is about that staple of music ballads—a bad relationship. From that, the director created a tale about a lone captain weathering a storm on a Victorian airship, complete with a steam punk aesthetic, pet dragon, and a melancholic air.

Looking at the film you’d think it was all CGI, but if you watch the making of doc below you’ll see that, while they used a digital backlot, they also used a real actor for the captain, and puppeteer techniques to simulate the wind for the actor’s scarf. Filming him along with the ship’s wheel in front of a green screen, Alender explains how they wanted to create a look that was a cross between photo-real and illustrated. To achieve this, they filmed with black lights and florescent paint, which allowed them to isolate the colour channels and manipulate them in post-production, creating the bright, highly contrasting lighting effect similar to that seen in the film Sin City.

For a major Hollywood studio a film like this would be no big thing, but as a collaborative labour of love on a minimal budget with only one day’s shooting, it’s pretty impressive.