Submarine Channel

Morituri Te Salutant by Niko Stumpo

This 13-and-a-half minutes animated labor of love by Norwegian-Italian cross-media artist Niko Stumpo, is a sinister yet spell-binding voyage laced with death, failure, and monsters… It’s a hoot, honestly!

We had a little chat with Mr. Stumpo (a.k.a Abnormal Behaviour Child) to see if his mind is as twisted as this masterpiece would have you believe.

Can you give us a quick summary of what happens during the animation?
It is a Dystopian musical orituritale, a short trip into the death of four characters, the moment they say goodbye. I worked having in mind kind of a broken video game, where you can’t really interact you just see the characters of the game, going out and dying.

Is this a personal or commercial work?
100% personal, no money involved, just time.

How long did it take to make?
In total 3 months.

Where is the voice sampled from?
From movies I like: Alien, Blade Runner, Mad Max and some others. Basically I discovered that most of the movies I like are part of a genre called Dystopian, so I did my own Dystopian tale, inspired by all the wonderful movies I have seen.

Is the soundtrack original or also sampled?
The sound is all made by me and a friend called Shablo, he is an Argentinian producer. It is been 2 years now that I am learning how to create sounds and music, I really love it: I think it is the strongest emotional art form.

What were the biggest challenges of the production?
Learning 3D, and the time it involves… I had never done a 3D project all by myself, so I wanted to try and learn.

There are hints of cuteness in this otherwise very dark and sinister piece. What does this represent?
Everything is dark and cute, depends from which point of view you look at it, I think.