Down a corridor plastered with posters of half-human, half-plant faces, a door opens to a room displaying winged resin figurines and books on everything from Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha to Star Wars. At the Rhode Island School of Design's Center for Design and Business, hundreds of printouts of gritty alleyways and abandoned warehouses are scattered across tables.
In this room, students from RISD, employees of a local animation studio and a local director have teamed up to begin work on an animated horror film. The office belongs to the local studio, called The Story Hat, which is pioneering an effort to create the first completely computer-animated horror film in the industry.
"It's a brand-new genre," said Kevin Mowrer, Story Hat's CEO.
Rhode Island producer and director Michael Corrente, the RISD students and Story Hat have already started preproduction work for the movie, "Bloodline." Set in a rough, urban neighborhood in a coastal town based on Providence, "Bloodline" tells the tale of a tattoo artist whose creations come to life and then terrorize their bearers.
Corrente and Mowrer said they are hoping to complete the movie 18 to 24 months from now and to release it by the end of 2009.
Fifteen to 20 RISD illustration students were selected through an application process to do preproduction work for the film, said William Foulkes, the executive director of the Center for Design and Business, a RISD department that connects businesses with RISD students, faculty and alums. The chosen students, Mowrer said, are currently enrolled in a "sponsored class," a studio course designed to generate material for "Bloodline." Until the movie is released, the students are not allowed to discuss any aspects of the film other than what Story Hat has already released publicly, RISD Illustration Department Head Nicholas Jainschigg wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. All the students will appear in the film's credits, Corrente said.
With his two partners, Rob Travalino and Anthony Lucci, Mowrer founded Story Hat in 2000. The three are former Hasbro employees, and their past projects include work on the G.I. Joe cartoon and re-launching the Transformers line. Story Hat's collaboration with RISD students and professors is the result of Mowrer's vision of what he calls an "open-source" project, which allows potential audience members to involve themselves directly in its development.
"The students who are working on (the movie) are actually the audience," Mowrer said. "That's who the movie is targeted at - the 17- to 35-year-old. The core is a college-aged student."
The RISD-Story Hat partnership came about naturally, Foulkes said. "It was really a no-brainer," he said. "What he's doing, and the network he's creating and the partnerships that he has fit so well with what we're trying to do with the Center, with RISD."
The students also provide input on the script, which was written by Travalino.
The music of "Bloodline" will be partially "open-source" as well, Corrente said. He added that he and the other members of the movie's production team will likely open five or six major scenes for a local band to write scores for.
While Corrente and Mowrer declined to reveal a precise budget for the film, calling it their "secret weapon," Mowrer did say they plan to bring a "very well-known" street artist onto the project. Mowrer also said he would also like to open up spaces to Brown computer science students to work on the project.
Corrente and Mowrer joined forces last summer when Mowrer suggested that they create a computer-animated horror movie together. Then, Mowrer said, the idea of a tattoo artist whose tattoos come to life began to pick up momentum.
"We were sitting over at the restaurant down the street from here," Mowrer said. "He overheard me telling someone about an idea that we had ... of this tattoo artist who has extraordinarily abilities. And he just leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's it!'"
