‘Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker’ Trailer

We don’t often post trailers for animated shorts, but the 2-minute teaser for Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker has attracted a lot of attention over the past few days, and deservedly so. The 14-minute short will accompany the new music album (and transmedia project) “The Dream Walker” from Angels & Airwaves, a group helmed by Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge.

Premiering next month at the Toronto International Short Film Festival ahead of its December 9 online release, Poet Anderson revolves around the character Poet, a lucid dreamer:

His unique capabilities prompt him to explore a deeply fascinating, dark world, where he not only meets his guide and protector, The Dream Walker, but also his worst nightmare, a vicious monster called the Night Terror. When reality and the dream world collide, however, Poet must gather his courage and become the hero he was meant to be.

The evident production values in the trailer make it all the more surprising that no commercial studio was involved in the production of the film. Poet Anderson was directed by twin brothers from Portugal—Sergio and Edgar Martins—who pulled together a small team of friends and produced the entire film independently through Tom DeLonge’s management company To the Stars. Sergio Martins tells me that it all began with the following animation test of Blink-182’s bunny mascot that he sent unsolicited to DeLonge:

Martins attached a note telling DeLonge that he was available for animation work not knowing that at the time DeLonge was developing Poet Anderson, a multimedia project that also includes comics and a graphic novel in addition to the music album and film. DeLonge, thusly, invited the Martins brothers to collaborate with him on the film. The Martins, using concept art by Mike Henry as a starting point, created Poet Anderson with a blend of hand-drawn Flash and CG (Blender for modeling and XSI for animation).

We’ll have more on the film when it’s released. DeLonge discusses the “Dream Walker” project at length in this interview.

Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker Credits
Written and Directed by Tom Delonge, Sergio Martins and Edgar Martins (also written by Ben Kull)
Supervising animator: Sergio Martins
Storyboard and Layout: Edgar Martins
Art Direction: Carina Morais
TD and CG supervisor: Miguel Mota
Score: Angels And Airwaves
Supervising Sound Editor: Robert Kellough