Preparation for my major project began in the summer. I attended a class back in June in the university where our tutors gave us information about final year. They encouraged us to start researching and coming up with ideas for our films and major project.
I began by keeping my mind open, looking for inspiration. I watched several films and tv shows over the summer so I could find out what I liked and what I didn’t like, what I wanted to do.

I watched films and tv series over the summer, both live action and animated to help me find out what direction I want to go.

I rewatched the Cartoon Saloon Irish Mythology trilogy, Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers. Which I find so fascinating and it is full of stories that most people do not know about, I feel a duty to help these stories spread further. It would prove useful too if I ever want to get a job with cartoon saloon!

I looked at other student short films to give myself a realistic idea on what I can accomplish, made a playlist on youtube full of my favourites.

These two films are by Rachel Kim, I love the humour, and the style. Which gives me a good idea on what is possible for me to achieve in animation.

Whack Jobs and Define intervention are made by Irish animation students. I love the originality and absurdity of their stories.

I had to come up with a story, but what would it be? I thought of what I like, what inspires me, things I
find interesting. I want to come up with something original, heartfelt that I know people will enjoy. I want something that comes from me. My own life. So I thought about that. I live on a farm, in the countryside of Ireland, I want the setting to be there, but what will happen?

I looked up advice on storytelling and it was recommended to ask myself these questions

• who’s it about?
• What do they want?
• Why can’t they get it?
• Why doesn’t that work?
• How does it end?

I ran these questions in my head again and again. The film will be about someone who lives on a farm in
Ireland, but what happens, and how do I incorporate Irish Mythology into this?

I found the RTE archives website, full of old news stories from throughout the years, I searched up County Monaghan, where I’m from. A very strange story caught my attention, there was a sighting of a big cat on a farm here in the early 2000s, a black Puma, which went on rampages on the farms and killed sheep. I felt there was a story in this. The farmer in my short will come face to face with this Puma, and what if the Puma is a fairy, a shapeshifting fairy?
I listened to an interview with the Irish Seancahi Eddie Lenihan in which he was asked what does a fairy look like and he said that the person sitting right next to you could be a fairy and you wouldn’t even know it, but if the fairy took the image of an animal, they would be pure black, with no white hair, like the puma!
I sketched out ideas for the story, maybe this old person thinks they see a Puma attacking sheep on their farm and their neighbours think they’re crazy, maybe they think they are away with the fairies?
As I had my rough idea for a story I knew I wanted people to work with me on this idea. It will be a long year and it will be great to have a team. Then we can make a sort longer than a couple minutes and then it could be compelling. I am faced with a challenge though, I don’t know anyone in my year, as I’m  skipping placement year it will mostly be new faces, and I had already skipped into second year and then the pandemic made it even harder to get to know people. I didn’t want this to be a deterrent so I reached out to people in the discord server for the animation course. I found a couple of people who were interested in doing a 2D short so we made a group chat, but then we decided we wanted to do different ideas and it broke off. I still will have time when college starts up again to find more people to work it, it
will be good to just be able to bounce the ideas off of someone.

I dived more into the rte archives, and found an interesting interview. It’s with a man called Jim McSweeney, from Co. Limerick. It starts with the old man carrying a ladder through a field, placing the ladder on a tree and climbing up. He grabs wires and ropes and tightens them inside the tree. Mike Murphy the interviewer joins him at the bottom of the tree and they talk. It is revealed that Jim thinks this tree is a fairy tree, one of his ancestors saw the fairies dancing around it one night, his family believes that the last of them would die if the tree was to fall, Jim is the last living member in his family. The interviewer then grabs a branch of the tree and shakes it and Jim freaks out to stop him, which is quite funny!

https://youtu.be/4zIWizf_FOg the spell of the fairy tree interview

I found this interview very dramatic. There is so many things I could do with this story. If the tree does fall, what will happen? Will Jim die? What if a fairy pops out? I gave thought into how I can incorporate the Puma into this idea.

I continue researching, drawing and sketching coming up with ideas.

I wanted to get some feedback on my story in the first day back in class, so I did some preparation. I drew up a treatment like this, and briefly wrote out the story.

Treatment

Title: Away with the Fairies
Genre: Fantasy, drama, comedy
Duration: 3-4 minutes
Sypnosis: A farmer takes great care of a tree because he believes that if that tree falls he will die
Name: Caithlin mulligan
Date: 26/9/22
Plot

The story starts with Tommy hosting a little get together with his neighbours, Maggie and Michael.
They’re telling stories around the fireplace. Tommy tells them about his fairy tree and how one of his ancestors saw real fairies dancing around it one night. He finishes by saying that he will die if that tree falls, or he thinks so. He ends up saying goodbye to the neighbours and looks on to the fairy tree at the top of the hill and then his empty house, lonely. The next morning Tommy treks up the hill to the fairy tree, he has a little fence and gate around it. He inspects the tree and he wires and poles he propped against it. He does a few chores and the day goes by. He’s in bed again and is woken up by a storm. Scared for the tree he rushes outside and sees it bowing rapidly in the wind. Tommy tries his best to keep the tree up but it
falls. He is exhausted and stressed. Fiddle music starts to play. Tommy believes this is it the fairies are coming for him. A creature comes out of the ground, from under the tree, it’s angry, it’s a fairy! Tommy closes his eyes, freaked out, this is it, all the effort and now he’s going to die. The fairy creature pays no attention to him, it is just annoyed and cursing at the tree. It was his home and it’s now destroyed. Tommy just watches the fairy creature jump around, he sorta rolls his eyes and tries to speak to it. He asks the fairy if he’s gonna do away with him. The fairy says no, it’s just sad it’s home is destroyed. Tommy then thinks, and then says you can move in with me. The fairy agrees.
Credits,Images of how they get along, maybe they chop up the tree for firewood, drink tea, have apple tart.

I received feedback from my tutors, it fortunately was mostly positive and they liked my story idea. They helped me work out the story, and advised that 3-4 minutes may be too long if I am working on this by myself. One suggested that I need to do something more to prove that the tree was really precious to the old man, that he would be very scared if it fell, that I should let a child kick a ball against it and have the old man get scared, I felt this may be unecessary as it is already shown that the old man built a fence around the tree and has poles propping it up. I was advised to thumbnail out the story beats and make a rough animatic so I could time out the story, to give a clear idea of how long it will be.

I was also advised to make a rough plan for the year, to keep in check the progress I will be making. I hope to have my concept art and rough storyboards done before the pitch presentations on the 10/10/2022, the week after I will do my character turnarounds, storyboards and start my backgrounds before my pre-production presentation on 7/11/22. Then I will be animating and working on the backgrounds until February. Then in march I will be colouring, Easter will be spent working on fixes, then Editing. Hello, this
is future me looking back, I was being way too ambitious, and all of this took much much more time!!

I have been studying the animation production pipeline to assist with my planning.

One of my tutors recommended that I look into the film Ferngully as it has similar themes to my film idea concerning nature and fairies.

I thumbnailed out the storybeats of my film and made it into a very rough animatic. The films ended up being 3 minutes long with 2 minutes 20 seconds of animation.

Pitch presentation feedback 10/10/2022
After my pitch presentation I received some very helpful feedback.
I was advised to cut the story down, there could be some things taken out that are not needed such as Tommy going about his day. I was suggested to start the short with Tommy taking care of the tree and put the narration over it, which would save on time.
I was also given advice on Biddy’s design, which I am struggling with. I was advised to look more into how druids looked back then and maybe give him a cape, which sounds like a good idea!

What I will do now is design the characters.

At the pitch my tutors also recommended to look into work by Brian Froud, who created these illustrations below. They should give good inspiration into designing my fairy character as this artist has a special way of incorporating nature into the design.