Oct 24, 2014

Poet Anderson Dream Walker Trailer

It's not often that we post trailers for animated shorts, but the two-minute teaser for "Poet Anderson" has garnered a great deal of attention over the past few days: the two-minute teaser for "The Dream Walker. The 14-minute short is being produced to accompany The Dream Walker, a new music album (and transmedia project) by Angels & Airwaves, a group led by Blink-182's Tom DeLonge.

"Poet Anderson," which premieres next month at the Toronto International Short Film Festival prior to its online release on December 9, revolves around Poet, a lucid dreamer. But when reality and the dream world collide, Poet must summon up her courage and become the hero she was meant to be.

The obvious production value of the trailer makes it all the more surprising that no commercial studio was involved in the making of this film. Poet Anderson was directed by twin brothers Sergio Martins and Edgar Martins, both from Portugal, who formed a small team of friends and produced the entire film independently through Tom DeLonge's management company, To The Stars. Sergio Martins said it all began with an animation test of Blink 182's rabbit mascot that he sent to DeLonge without permission.

Unaware that DeLonge was at the time developing Poet Anderson, a multimedia project that would include a music album and film as well as a comic and graphic novel, Martins attached a note telling him that animation work was available. Thus, DeLonge asked the Martins brothers to collaborate on the film. Using Mike Henry's concept art as a starting point, the Martins brothers combined hand-drawn Flash and CG (Blender for modeling and XSI for animation) to create "Anderson the Poet."

We will tell you more when the film is released. DeLonge talks more about the "Dream Walker" project in this interview.

Credits for "Poet Anderson: Dream Walker Writer/Directors Tom DeLonge, Sergio Martins, Edgar Martins (Ben Kalu also wrote the script) Supervising Animator Sergio Martins Storyboard, Layout Edgar Martins Art Direction Carina Morais TD and CG Supervisor Miguel Mota Score Angels and Airwaves Supervising Sound Editor Robert Kellow [13].