It is done: Nina Paley’s “Apocalypse Animated”

Famed animator (and QCO Artist-in-Residence) Nina Paley has finished a project that she’s been working on for nearly half a year: Apocalypse Animated, animations to accompany the complete Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament.

Enjoy the 3-minute trailer, then jump straight in starting at Chapter 1. The animations, in combination with the actual words of the King James Bible, are irreverently powerful — which is not a collocation I ever thought I’d write, but Nina Paley has a way of defying expectations.

She has also released the full-resolution, uncompressed video files under a Free license, because she wants people to be free to build on her work as she builds on the works of others. In her words: have at it! You can re-use material from Apocalypse Animated however you are inspired to. As Nina points out, the videos can be looped, so if someone wanted to narrate the Book of Revelation accompanied by these videos, they could do so. As she also pointed out, Apocalypse Animated would make a great eBook too, if only eBooks supported animated GIFs. But maybe some eBook technologist out there knows a way to make it work? Note that if you want to use the materials in a proprietary project, then you should contact her for a license waiver, but otherwise you don’t need to ask her permission at all.

A lot of the visual vocabulary of Apocalypse Animated is part of MysticSymbolic, Nina Paley’s experiment with Atul Varma. If you like Apocalypse Animated, look in MysticSymbolic for more (see here for additional information).

If you want to support Nina Paley’s work, you can donate to our Artist-in-Residence Working Fund, or donate to her directly via PayPal or Patreon. You can also donate to Nina’s Bitcoin address: 1CXRtajYegJRDqYekcELejbW8NAaYJSDaE.