"The Canal"

Canal

Length: Unknown, maybe around 3 min (March 2005: Existing clip on Corben Website was 1m32s / 8,8 Mb.
Style: CGI. Genre: Horror. Music: Tim Higgins.
Based on: H.P. Lovecraft poem, "The Canal". Comics story adaptation: "The Canal".
Published: Lurker in the Lobby, Vol. II: The Best of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival (Nov. 2000) VHS-cassette.

Animation: Clip on Corben Website starts with water riples. You can see a fade nude female figure and a skull. Scene follows with a camera pan above laying skeletons covered with flies. Female VO reads a poem "The Canal". Prob. there's an entire poem because she's already at that point of verse, "Wind off to streets one may or may not know." Smoke, piles of dead bodies and silhuetto of skycrapers. Bright light. Silhuetto of a clothed figure. Wind is dancing on a figure's cloak. Broken wall and standing still figure. Wind plays still with cloak. Figure appears to be a bold, nude female. Female VO goes on with a poem. Empty windowed buildings break down into pieces. Poem ends while buildings collapse. A clip does not go till the end of animation.
Comment: Very strong dreamy mood. According the clip animation might be around 3 minutes long. It uses a cloth animation on a cloak and the cloak swrils in the air and wind nicely. Water effect in the beginning and flies and smoke has been made also by some kind of automatic particle animation.
Comparing Adaptations: I haven't seen the entire animation and cannot say how it starts. But both adaptations circles on a same theme. In comic version, we've got a dark skinned couple, in animation version you can see only a female figure, who is gray as buildings. One can see her as a statue.
Movies: Mr. Corben made 2000 an animation, "The Canal", from the same poem.

"The Canal", animation