Using the interactive technology in Hunt Library’s game lab, Marc Russo, an assistant professor of Art + Design, presented his reimagination of the signs of the apocalypse and connected video art and Renaissance paintings Wednesday evening.
Nearly 70 students visited Centennial Campus’ game lab at Hunt Library to listen to Russo discuss his computer-animated project in which he reimagined the famous artistic depiction of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse appear in the Book of Revelation and in most instances, the four riders are seen as symbolizing conquest, war, famine and death.
Russo analyzed how the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been artistically depicted countless times since they were introduced as a symbol in the first century.
His personal interpretation of the Four Horseman was one of silence, decay, consumption and death. He said he wanted to use the old imagery of the horseman and bring them into the modern age through digital animation.
The project featured four large panels of animations that were interactive. When touched, the animation on that panel would go to another sequence.
Russo started off the presentation with some background on the creation of the Four Horseman animations. The project took Russo 13 months to create and he went through the processes of storyboarding, modeling, texturing, animatics, Polish animation rendering and sound.
“Everything you see from those worlds had to be built from scratch,” Russo said.
The inspiration behind his project first came from Marvel Comics. In a comic called “X-Factor,” the villain is named Apocalypse and has four horsemen. Another inspiration includes heavy metal, namely Metallica and “The Four Horsemen” song.
Russo said he decided to take the labels for the four panels out so that the audience had more room to form their own story and interpretations about the animations.
Students have had varied responses, with a common belief that the project looked disturbing but was thought provoking.
“This pretty much blew me away. Just seeing this was so different from what you would think of as animation and with film, so it’s definitely a big inspiration for me to join the program, because I’m a grad student in the Art + Design program,” said Natalia Lopez, a grad student studying animation and media.
“This was a really fascinating and provocative take on an ancient text,” said Sam Boldenow, one of the viewers. “It’s really cool to see animation being used to do really interesting art like that.”
Russo said the most satisfying part of creating his animation projects was letting what he built come to life.
“The absolute greatest moment is when you’re building all of this stuff and then all of a sudden you set it into motion and you let it play and you realize that you gave that thing life,” Russo said. “No matter how many animations I create, no matter how many times I do it, the first time you sort of say ‘go,’ and it plays and it moves, it’s like ‘oh my god, this is why I do this.’ So there is a wonderful thing about being a part of that breathing life into something.”
Russo’s work with animations have been selected by international film festivals and have awards including “Excellence in Animation” from the Carrboro Film Festival and the “Experimental Film Award” from the Indie Grits Film Festival.
Russo’s project will be available for viewing in the game lab on Thursday and Friday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., as well as on Saturday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
