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](http://canadiandesignresource.ca/illustration/louis-riel-comic-strip-biography/) 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.