Sports and the chaos of college life meet Lovecraftian abominations in Necronundrum! Graham, a college hockey player, unknowingly discovers one of the copies of the Necronomicon at his school library, and ends up accidentally summoning a creature from the horrific cosmic depths with its power.
In this storyboard sequence of a moment from the end of the script, Graham's best friend Adrian arrives at the house with dinner. Unbeknownst to Adrian as he makes his way to Graham's room, the Necronomicon has finally begun to enthrall Graham and start to reveal its power.
Key Visuals
Since the animatic focuses on a sequence much later in the story, I drew some key visuals to hit on some of the main story beats from the original script. Click for descriptions!
Bonus! Early Concept Art and Character Sketches
This story was initially conceived back in Spring 2019, written as a script for the first issue of a comic for my "Literature of Fantasy: The Weird" class, and I later combined the skills learned in the preproduction focused classes I took to evolve it into a developed pitch for an animated project. In our readings and discussions within that literature class, we talked a lot about how many newer Weird and "Neo-Lovecraftian" stories respond to a lot of the established Cthulhu mythos by challenging and expanding on the world in their own way. When I talk to people about Lovecraftian and mind-numbing cosmic existential horror stories, people usually focus on the depressing and terrifying notes of it and how many of them depict a turning away from life. I still wanted to hit on those horror elements and give those truly freaky moments their own time to shine, but overall I wanted this story to react and revel in the absurdity of the situation. I wanted to take Weird elements and put them in a modern setting, specifically the idea of how college students more like the ones of current times might react if they accidentally summoned an Ancient One in their dorm room but still had to focus on school.
Big thanks to my professor Monika Salter who advised me through this project and to my family and everyone who has supported me these past four years at UTD!
