This silent, fully hand-drawn short film is a personal homage to the visual storytelling that inspired me—merging the eerie atmosphere of classic horror films with the stylized aesthetics of comic book art.
Inspired by solitary walks in the woods near my home, the piece was animated frame-by-frame in Adobe Photoshop, with supporting elements in Illustrator and final compositing in After Effects.
Though originally made as a personal project, the film found an unexpected audience online—garnering over 69,000 views and hundreds of comments across Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook.
So here it is, enjoy!
Inspired by solitary walks in the woods near my home, the piece was animated frame-by-frame in Adobe Photoshop, with supporting elements in Illustrator and final compositing in After Effects.
Though originally made as a personal project, the film found an unexpected audience online—garnering over 69,000 views and hundreds of comments across Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook.
So here it is, enjoy!
Final Film
The Process
After the initial basic storyboard, I started adding more details and blocking out my scenes, in order to decide where to place the "actors" and the "camera"
Next I drew and colored all the different scenes, while keeping foreground, midground and background layers separate for maximum flexibility later on while animating
Next came the character design and animation. I modelled the main character after myself.
As for the monster, I went with a slender creature that hides a much bigger parasite within it.
The parasite's head is a homage to the Demogorgon from Netflix's Stranger Things.
As for the monster, I went with a slender creature that hides a much bigger parasite within it.
The parasite's head is a homage to the Demogorgon from Netflix's Stranger Things.
This was my first attempt at dealing with the concept of 'smears and multiples' in animation, which are basically hand drawn motion blurs. Fun!
Then I made some additional animations and onomatopoeia before moving on to After Effects for compositing and editing the final sequence
In After Effects I edited the scenes, animated parallaxes and added zooms for dramatic effect. I then color graded and added noise and other textures to achieve that 70s-80s grindhouse film look.
Et voilà! My little horror project is done.
Et voilà! My little horror project is done.
Concept, Illustration, Animation, Motion Design: Salam Homoud
2022