Darkest Days is an animated musical created using Valve’s SFM engine. It was created with a number of goals in mind. It was due to wanting to get into game design and world building, and more importantly, I saw how heavy metal music was treated unfairly.
I had been playing guitar in a progressive metal band and people would always tell me that ‘it’s too loud’ and ‘why does the singer scream! that’s not singing’.
“I wanted to show that heavy metal music can be appreciated as emotional music and not the idea that it’s all about murder and killing”
I spent a year making ‘Darkest Days’, working 5 hours every night after work during the week, and 14 hour days on the weekend. I also set myself a dead line by completing it by June 2013
I must admit the animation does suck. But the focus was always on the music. It’s what drove the emotion.
I still remember going to work listening to Brand New’s song ‘Play Crack The Sky’. I could see a man drifting out into sea, trying to get away from something. I sat listening, trying to work to why he was out there. What was he trying to get away from?
It was from that moment that Darkest Days was created. I had the ending, I just needed to work out what the rest.
In 2013, Darkest Days was shown at the Pollygrind Film Festival, held in Las Vegas. It won ‘Best Animated Feature’ at the event.
As of 2019, the original ‘Darkest Days’ had reached a total of 7.8 million views.
