“I had more or less given up hope of ever seeing a good Lovecraft-inspired movie … until someone sent me the script for Arkham Sanitarium and a clip or two from the forthcoming film. My hopes renewed, this is one I’ll just have to see…” Brian Lumley, bestselling author of Necroscope®

Thank you for your interest and support Mr. Lumley! The makers of Arkham Sanitarium are big fans of your Titus Crow stories!

Finally got around to doing some 3D modeling today on the Cthulhu bust – all very much work-in-progress at the moment. Got to finish the modeling and do some proper shaders and lighting. When finished, these statues will flank the staircase leading to the monolith where dead Cthulhu dreams…

More to come soon!

*edit* I’m toying with the idea of using 3D printing to make some 6″ models of this statue once it’s finished – if anyone’s interested in buying one of these limited edition, hand-painted statues please register your interest by voting in our poll in the sidebar on the right – thanks! Andrew.

Hey! What’s this? Concept art?? Normally I don’t like to post my concept stuff for the film – why? ‘Cause it’s usually rushed and intended to give artists just an idea of what I want (i.e. stickmen ) – in this case, I spent a little time working on some ideas for everyone’s favourite cephalopod and I’m pretty happy with it so I thought I’d share. Yeah – I know it’s not finished – doesn’t need to be – I’ve got enough ideas to start modeling it in 3D so that’ll be up next – stay tuned! Andrew.

*edit* OK, did a little more to it – can’t help it, ArtRage is sooo much fun to paint with incidentally, I guess this is a good case of ‘less is more’ – I think the pencil and ink version is a lot more menacing – ah well…

I’ve been absent for a while working on the VFX for the film and also putting together some actor showreel footage which I thought I’d share with you – below you can see a number of Dan McSherry’s (Robert Harrison Blake) scenes from the movie:

It’s not finished footage but hopefully you’ll agree it has a suitably Lovecraftian feel…

(Oh, and I know the lip-sync drifts a little at the end – that’s an MP4 thing I’m trying to fix…)

From the initial idea of Arkham Sanitarium all the way up to filming (and beyond) I’ve kept a journal which has all my story notes, character bios, sketches etc.

It’s an interesting record of the development of the script and the film – here’s a glimpse inside:

Contributors donating $10 or more to our IndieGoGo campaign will be entered into a draw to win the actual journal – we’re also making the entire scanned journal available on our IndieGoGo contributors page right here at survivorfilms.com!

If you haven’t contributed yet, please consider it! Any and all contributions will help us make the most faithful H.P. Lovecraft movie seen yet!

How do you go about designing such a thing? R’lyeh is as mysterious as it is iconic and in attempting something like this on a small budget, any film runs the risk of disappointing the fans (and the film-makers).

There’s no ‘canon’ to follow in designing R’lyeh other than the words of H.P. Lovecraft himself – and HPL was big on creating atmosphere rather than detailing the specifics.

So what do we know about this forbidding and unearthly sunken city that rests at the bottom of the Pacific?

In Lovecraft’s classic tale, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ we learn the following:

• The coastline is of mud, ooze and “weedy Cyclopean masonry”
• Cthulhu lies dreaming in a “monolith crowned citadel” of “dizzying height”
• This citadel is built from massive “greenish stone blocks”
• It features colossal “statues and bas-reliefs” of “stupefying identity”
• It also exhibits “vast angles and stone surfaces” with “horrible images and hieroglyphs”
• The geometry is “non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres”
• Johansen’s men climb “titan oozy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase”
• On the monolith is an “immense carved door with the now familiar squid-dragon bas-relief”

As we’re creating a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft, these above descriptions have to be our starting point – but where next? There’s some very nice artwork out there already for R’lyeh but nothing that really works for me in the context of Lovecraft’s story and what we want to show in Arkham Sanitarium.

I’ve got two specific ideas in mind for the styling of this legendary necropolis – in Part II you’ll see how these ideas come together but for now, here’s a couple of pictures (courtesy of Wikipedia) to give a glimpse of what’s to come…

Contributors get great perks including posters, props from the movie and access to an exclusive area of this website with behind the scenes material, work-in-progress visual FX, and notes and articles by the director! In addition, everyone that contributes towards the film with be entered into a draw to win the director’s journal – a one-of-a-kind souvenir of the the making of the film!

Also, an interview with the director and details of Survivor Films’ IndieGoGo campaign for Arkham Sanitarium!