After the viral success of my fan animation of Junji Ito’s “Enigma of Amigara Fault”, I got a DM from UK horror author T.W. Burgess to collaborate on a horror short. He had seen Junji Ito’s retweet of my animation and retweeted it himself, and was inspired to work with me. The idea was to create a creepypasta-style horror story, with elements of 1990s vintage retro technology and horror stylings. The story was originally set in the 1980s, but was updated to the 1990s. Background art and elements were updated accordingly.
For a narrator, we decided on reaching out to indie horror game streamer “ManlyBadassHero”, who is known for his deep baritone voice and deadpan humor on YouTube. Amazingly, he said yes! He voiced the script that T.W. and I co-wrote.
I started storyboarding and concepts in Spring 2021. Burgess created the pixel art “Hairy Henry” game, as he also works as a graphic designer and digital artist. After two months of animating, the project had to be shelved due to production issues. The project was revived a year later, and finally shared on Burgess’ and my socials. Burgess shared it to his sizable online following, and Manly did to his. He retweeted it to his followers, who all raved over the work and his performance.