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The short opens on a vase with the commonly known form of Medusa on it.

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Statue of Minerva in the framing device.
Layout by R. Brian Wilson and art by Anna Jano.

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Statue of Minerva in Minerva's temple.
Layout and temple by R. Brian Wilson, background art by Amanda Lupien, and the statue sculpted by Matt Partin.

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Medusa meets Neptune, the god of the sea.

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Neptune and Medusa

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Neptune enraged.

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Medusa looks up at the statue of Minerva in the temple.

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Medusa begs Minerva, her patron goddess, for mercy and forgiveness.

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Minerva, goddess of wisdom. She carries the mirrored shield she will one day give to Perseus.

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As the undue punishment begins, Medusa leans back in pain.

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Medusa's transformation begins. It takes place in a single revolving shot with over 160 individual drawings.

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This shot was difficult in almost every aspect - from getting the timing of the acting and the transformations right, to the physics of the newly formed wings, to the marriage of the 2D character to the 3D environment.
Simply, it was a lot of hard work.

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The transformation happens in stages. First, the wings, then her skin, then her hair turns into the snakes... all before her face finally distorts.

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The short ends on the reverse view of the pot; a reveal that shows that the human and creature are both Medusa.

Medusa - Human Form Concept Art

Concept art of the human form of Medusa is a collaboration between R. Brian Wilson and Matt Vogler.

Medusa - Creature Form Concept Art

Concept art of the creature form of Medusa is a collaboration between R. Brian Wilson, and Matt Vogler, which was based on an earlier concept by Anna Jano.

Neptune Concept Art

Concept art of Neptune is a collaboration between R. Brian Wilson and Matt Vogler.

Minerva Concept Art

Concept art of Minerva is a collaboration between R. Brian Wilson and Matt Vogler.

Temple Background Art

Background Art by Amanda Lupien based on a layout by R. Brian Wilson. This was designed in sections that could be moved around in a 3D world to give a sense of scale and depth.

World Layout 1

Amanda's art in Autodesk's Maya. The individual layers were resized to real-world proportions and spread out to appropriate distances. Note the Green-highlighted Minerva statue as it will appear in the next image.

World Layout 2

A zoomed-out view to show how large this world had to be - the mountains are roughly real-sized. Again, note the tiny bright green in the bottom left - that is the same Minerva statue from the previous image.

Framing Device pt.3 Background

All the background art for the framing devices were created by Anna Jano based on layouts by R. Brian Wilson. This shot was particularly tricky because it had to fake a perspective change while in reality it was a flat image sliding and scaling across the screen. A difficult, but fun challenge.