I used to feel so guilty when I lost at the two-color Hangman game on my parents’ 8-bit IBM or Commodore, or whatever it was. My inability to save that blocky, primitive, schematoid figure was heartbreaking, even if “he” was faceless and generic – and replaced in the next round by yet another Hangman.
Now tender-hearted gamers can all feel even worse, thanks to SVA alum Patrick Dorian.
Collaborating with games-and-apps hothouse Freeverse, Patrick envisioned and animated Hanged, a stop-motion iPhone app that rejuvenates the 200-year-old tragic hero. Patrick makes him over with a look that blends Ivy League prep with graveyard chic (Make It Work!), and appends the hangman with a pig-tailed girl next door.
He illuminates the sparse, cerebral guessing game with a melodramatic, tumultuous love story. The setting is melancholy, awash in lachrymose grays and occasional cameos of blood red. One might think of Tim Burton, an inevitable comparison for anything animated and gloomy.
“We wanted to take a familiar and simple game, and re-think it from the ground-up, trying to add an emotional component through both art and technology. Hangman seemed like the perfect candidate,” writes Freeverse Marketing Director, Lydia Heitman.
She continues: “The game is about the emotional violence inherent in relationships, for which the hanging is a metaphor. The story is left intentionally ambiguous to allow the player to apply the experience with their own emotional experiences.”
The Artist at work
Patrick began developing the animation after meeting with Colin Lynch Smith, Vice President of Freeverse. Patrick graduated in 2003 from the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program, where he studied under thesis advisors Voltaire and Jonathon Rosen (Rosen himself is no stranger to Tim Burton; he did the sketchbook drawings in Burton’s Sleepy Hollow).
"Crime Scene" by Jonathon Rosen in "Sleep Hollow"
“I love stopmotion for its surreal quality. Ladislas Starevich, Otto Messmer, Ivan Albright, and Otto Dix have been big influences on my work. I’ve always been drawn to artists who tell stories and create their own worlds. You can feel their hand in their work. Its what I strive to do in my own work.”
The Set at rest
Ms. Heitman adds to that lineage the apparent influence of Rankin/Bass and Jan Svankmajer films.
Hanged caught the roving eyes of Entertainment Weekly, which included the app in its “Must List.” Some of Patrick’s other projects are on youtube, and he maintained a blog that archives his designs and illustrations.
