Anthony Lucci talks in the Weybosset Street office last week. Bloodline, which tells the story of tattoos that wreak havoc on their bearers, could take at least 16 months to create.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Director Michael Corrente is teaming up with a Providence animation studio to make a first-of-its-kind animated horror movie, created wholly in Rhode Island and with the help of illustration students from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Corrente and the three-man team from The Story Hat, based on Weybosset Street in Providence, will begin preproduction this week on a computer-animated horror film called Bloodline, which tells the story of tattoos that grow and change and wreak havoc on their bearers. The film, which could take upwards of 16 months to create, is touted by Corrente as “the first American animated feature-length [computer-generated imagery] horror movie ever made.”

“You couldn’t do this in live action. It wouldn’t work. These elements come together perfectly and are suited for animation. Because you can watch it grow and actually morph into something really scary,” Corrente said. “You take that, and throw in a great story … and it was electrifying to me. I just thought this was a no-brainer. It’ll work.”

They envision a broad national release, and a genre-making movie, one that would also put Rhode Island on the map as an animation headquarters. They estimate that the film’s production would employ close to 200 people when it is running full-tilt.

The project does not yet have complete financing or a distribution deal, but Corrente is confident that those components will fall into line when the first test animation sections start rolling out in a few months.

Much of the initial preproduction work will be done by RISD students and professors as part of a special illustration class organized by the school and the studio.

The Story Hat is the creation of three former Hasbro employees — Kevin Mowrer, Rob Travalino and Anthony Lucci — who worked in various roles on some of the Pawtucket toy company’s most iconic properties, such as the GI Joe and Transformers cartoons, and on Hasbro-related movies such as Men in Black.

They branched out on their own in 2001, and thus far their biggest success has been a cartoon called Dragon Booster, which aired 39 episodes on ABC Family and Toon Disney from 2004 until its cancellation in 2006, and is now syndicated in 46 countries.

The Bloodline project was born last year over coffee at Tazza Café downtown. Corrente had just met the Story Hat team, and he was in the midst of planning his ScareRI project, in which he plans to produce 10 horror movies locally for $1 million each. While Corrente was talking with Travalino, he overheard Mowrer chatting with his assistant about the nascent idea for Bloodline. Corrente did a double take.

“I heard Kevin say, ‘Animated horror movie, told through the story of a tattoo artist,’ and my head sort of craned to the right. And I said, ‘What did you just say?’ ” Corrente said. “It was like someone hitting through a casino jackpot, on a slot machine, all these bells and whistles started going off in my head, and I knew that was a winner. You can’t walk out 10 feet anywhere … and not find people sporting some kind of tattoo.”

Corrente initially intended the film to be part of his ScareRI project, but he soon realized that it was far too ambitious and would require a larger budget. He said he would make an announcement on the status of that project in the coming weeks.

The Story Hat team said that they think the time is right for the venture.

“We believe that animation has grown up to the point where it’s ready to move in to other genres and, for us, we believe that horror is the right first other genre for it to move into, beyond classic family films,” Mowrer said.

Computer animation has made feature-length animated films cost-effective for smaller studios, and recent films have proven that there is an audience.

“Dramatic animation is something that Hollywood seems to paying a lot more attention to, with Beowulf and The Polar Express,” Travalino said.

The key, he said, is ensuring that the story is universal enough that viewers can relate, despite its animated nature.

“We really want to do something that’s about the journey of growing up. The story’s really about the issues that we face, in tattoo form, as you transition from your teen years to your college years into adulthood.

“What choices do you make? In our story, the choices are more graphic-based, as in what you put on you. The choice you make can really become passed on, whether you like it or not. The tagline for the movie is, ‘Sometimes, the ink goes straight to your soul,’ ” Travalino said.

Mowrer quickly jumped in that this is to be a more cerebral horror film.

“When we say horror movie, this is not a slasher movie. This is not a bucket of blood. It’s going to be scary, it’s going to definitely be for 16 all the way up through any level of adulthood you can imagine, but that’s because it’s a scary, intense, exciting movie, not because we’re putting as much blood and guts on the screen as we can,” he said.

It will also be a smaller-budget film than some of the pictures it references, such as the $150 million Beowulf.

“Rest assured, when this picture is finished and is successful, you’re going to see a whole slate of pictures like this coming out of the studio system. Because we’re going to make a movie that looks like we spent $60 million, for a fraction of that.”

Corrente and the Story Hat team would not say exactly how much they would spend — allowing only that Bloodline would cost somewhere between $1 million and $40 million. Corrente said that financing will come from a combination of private equity backing and loans, as he has done for most of his films.

Mowrer said that some of the savings will come from having RISD’s help, but some will come from using new kinds of software and animation techniques.

“A little bit because that’s our secret weapon, we kind of don’t want to talk about that at this point,” Mowrer said.

The RISD connection will help keep production costs on the film low, but will also give the film access to talented illustration students — and perhaps more importantly, illustration professors. The three-month class starts Wednesday, and the Story Hat team will be regularly involved.

“There are between 15 and 20 handpicked, highly talented illustration students who are going to begin what’s called the preproduction development process. Through their sketching and drawing, and under our direction, we’re going to be developing the look of the movie.”

Mowrer hopes that the project serves as an incubator to develop an animation industry in Rhode Island.

“Almost 100 percent of [RISD’s] animation students have to leave the state when they graduate. When we get this up and running, that will change very quickly.”

Mowrer said that the studio is now starting to put out the call for experienced animators to come to Rhode Island and work on the project and several others the studio has in development.

dbarbari@projo.com