Some background to get you started. Here’s a general geographical view of the actual Myrka valley. The elements and themes are there to discover. I was surprised to see the number of variations (don’t know why, shouldn’t have been) but it’s a classic northern tale of grisly returns from the dead to accost the living. There’s a strong undercurrent of love denied / lust and death. To modern audiences the jarring thing about the story is the anti-romantic strain. Rejecting a love one because he’s dead seemed the right thing to do in the past but we tend to see death as an unwanted separation not a final crossing into the dark with a penchant for grabbing others to join us. Anyway, The story is tight and should lend itself to a 10 to 15 minute short. 

Found this excellent storyboard by Hilda Torfadóttir from the Síðuskóla in Akureyri (1999), which just goes to show the story captures children’s imaginations.

Let me say that I’m a 3D enthusiast whose hobby has become an obsession. I’ve played with them all; Lightwave, 3DSMax, Maya, Softimage and Poser (even Truespace) and this is a record of my current attempts to create a short film based on an idea I’ve had for some time now. I’ll layout the details in other posts but for now let me say that I believe nothing has ever been done like this before. Mostly because the subject matter is so odd and off the beaten track that no one has thought it worth doing. Well, nothing like starting off the New Year with a bang.

I’ll be using Lightwave and Maya as my primary tools for this project. But first I’ll be publishing my storyboards and other guides that will form the base of the pre-viz. I’ve taken my cue from Peter Jackson’s exhaustive pre-viz setup to get the movie right. If you haven’t seen the documentary on The Lord of the Rings extended version extras where Jackson explains his method of pre-viz, It’s worth the look.

I’m an old hat at web tools of various sorts and I’m using Adobe’s Bee to get this going. It’s a great little tool based on Adobe’s Air technology. Hopefully it will be tested here and I can report on how it gets on.