"What could he do, should've been a father but he never made it to his twenties. What a waste, army dreamers. Ooh, what a waste of army dreamers"
I've recently been watching some war films for research purposes for a short film project I'm hoping to complete by the end of the year, of course, All Quiet on the Western Front is my favorite movie, I've seen the 1930s one before but never gotten around to the 2022 one.It's possibly one of my favorite films ever and I've never sobbed as much, I've brought the book as well and will be reading it over the week.
Volker Bertelmann will pay for my therapy bills because this movie's score is hauntingly beautiful and fills me with such grief.
If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it <3
Because one thing has become clear to me: you can cope with all the horror as long as you simply duck thinking about it – but it will kill you if you try to come to terms with it.
— Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
i didn't appreciate the last AQOTWF adaptation from a storytelling point of view, but that movie's visuals are the core inspiration for my project and the reason i started thinking about it altogether.
here's a gouache study i did approximately one month before starting to work on the comic book (so probably january or february of this year)