A super short teaser for Louis Riel’s birthday today. This piece was created by Nick Cross as an animated version of Chester Brown’s iconic illustrated story of the rebel leaders short but dramatic life on the western frontier. On his blog Cross said that he “wrote a treatment and then animated the following as a proof-of-concept for the general look of the film. I wanted to keep the really distinctive look of Brown’s characters, which were really reminiscent of Harold Gray’s Li’l Orphan Annie and Herge’s Tintin. I chose to break from the look of the novel by not only adding colour but also by expanding the picture frame from the rigid square comic panels, to a Cinemascope format. I felt this would help to suggest the width of the Canadian landscape and the vast distances from East to West, which is a central theme to the story”. Sadly never realized, we only have this screen test to drool over.