for my final major project I chose to create a Silhouette stop motion animation. The story was my person adaptation of an Irish legend. The legend is about an Irish hero called Oisin and a woman called Niamh from Tir na Nog (the otherworld).
I first found the story of ‘Oisin and Niamh’ from a Myths and Legends book I own. To adapt the story i researched the many existing adaptations of the story I found online. I also visited my family in Ireland in March and asked a lot about the legend and others related to the land.
I named my animation ‘Embarr’ after Niamh’s horse in the tale. The name means “imagination” and personally i think Embarr taking Oisin across the ocean to Tir na Nog is a metaphor for him falling alseep, going to the dream world.
To create the animation i used an A3 lightbox, black card cut outs for the characters and background and baking paper. The baking paper was used to blur the background cut outs of the camera so it was easier to distinguish the foreground from the background.
The characters were made to work as flat puppets. Each limb was cut individually to be held together by paper fasteners which worked as joints, allowing the puppet to move. the only issue using paper fasteners was occasionally you could see them behind the puppet in the animation.
To make the animation more interesting i added some digitally drawn close ups of Oisin’s hands. One of these shots is particularly important to the story as it shows Oisin ageing quickly, gaining wrinkles on his hands.
If I could develop my animation I would make the narrative clearer through the visuals rather than using text to explain the story the viewer. I would do this by adding more interesting shots, using different angles and close ups. I would also add more detail into the motion of the characters, trying to make them move more like humans. Finally i would improve the puppet designs. I would use a larger frame so I can make my characters larger and add more detail to them (this includes hands).