Sam MacInnis 2025

Abstract

Where Hyacinths Bloom is an abridged version of a longer film I intend to continue to work on over the summer. In its current form, it is a 2 minute 2D animated short film that explores themes of grief in a dark fantasy setting. In it, we follow Val, a maladjusted young woman who is visibly grieving the recent death of her best friend, Blue. As she goes through the motions of her day, she discovers a book of necromantic spells that has the potential to bring him back to life. With depictions of cartoon blood and heavier subject matter, the film is not extraordinarily graphic but not suitable for younger audiences, and is geared towards fellow fans of dark fantasy in the 18-25 range. WHB takes stylistic inspiration from the Hellboy comics and narrative inspiration from Killed The Cat Production’s short film Fuelled, Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You, and Finji’s game Night In The Woods. The layouts feature heavy, graphic shading inspired by a comic style, more specifically the work of Mike Mignola. Val’s character brings to light the numbness a lot of people experience during periods of grief between outbursts of overwhelming emotion. While her characterization has a life of its own, the way she handles grief is largely inspired by myself and the experience I had that inspired this project to begin with.