Dead Dylan Thomas Reading

As a tribute for his 52nd death anniversary, Swansea animation studio iCreate launched Virtual Dylan, a minute and a half 3D film of Dylan Thomas reading "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." The reading will be followed by a documentary.

But since there is no surviving film footage of the poet reading his own work, what they did was to combine existing photos, voice recordings and the molds of his death mask. The death mask itself was actually too flat for a 3D rendering so they also used footages of the actor Bob Kingdom reading from Thomas' work. The making of this project was dubbed a veritable "Madame Tussauds for the 21st century." Here's a glimpse of the Dylan Thomas' death mask:



Can you say creepy? They had to add another ten layers of virtual skin and added some hair to make it look more, uh, alive. While I heart Dylan Thomas (especially when you're sixteen and you spend your afternoons pawing the shelves of the Arts and Humanities section at the Main Lib), it's certainly a far cry from this photo where he was a bad, bad boy rockstar poet:



Here's also you can hear him reading the poem, which might be the same recording the iCreate people used.