Reading Kills, Animation Shows the Deadly Consequences of Reading

Brazilian animator Beto Gomez has imagined “a world where the simple act of reading” has “turned deadly” in the animated short, Reading Kills. The short was the final film project for Gomez who attended the Vancouver Film School Classical Animation program. Gomez describes a bit of his inspiration and process for Reading Kills:

Reading Kills was an idea that I had in 2007 (I believe) after watching Don Hertzfeldt´s “Rejected”. At that time I had no idea how to animate, so I kept the idea in an old paper that luckily didn’t get lost until 2011 when I entered VFS and had to work on a classical animated film.

The whole short took around 5 months (5 months of deadlines!) to be completed, same period that I renounced to shave my beard until completion of the film…

So the film was finished after these steps: storyboard, layout, rough animation, clean animation (done with a brush pen), scanning, Toon Boom, photoshop, sleeping pills (paying attention, right?), After FX and finally Premiere.