Hotel Aghast

From poem to picture

Every creative project starts as an idea. The challenge isn't simply bringing that idea to life. It's preserving the things that made it interesting in the first place.

Hotel Aghast began as a Halloween poem written by animator Demi Orfanidis. What followed was a highly collaborative creative process bringing together animation, music composition, sound design and voice performance to transform those early concepts into a finished animated short.

First, Demi turned her poem into storyboards. From there the project evolved through multiple creative disciplines while remaining anchored to the tone established in the earliest sketches. Music inspired by Banjo-Kazooie's Mad Monster Mansion theme informed the playful gothic atmosphere of the piece, while voice actor John Stretton brought Hotel Aghast's narrator to life with a performance reminiscent of classic horror storytelling.

While the finished film runs for only a few minutes, the project demonstrates something we care deeply about as creative practitioners: ideas don't become stronger simply because more people become involved. The challenge is ensuring they remain recognisably the same idea as they evolve.

Hotel Aghast remains one of our favourite examples of creative collaboration, where animation, music, sound and performance all worked towards the same creative objective.