ANIMATOR - FABRICATOR - MODELER
THE TALE OF BÚKOLLA PUPPETS
(2024)
As The Tale of Búkolla is a preexisting story set in Iceland, I wanted to draw inspiration from classic depictions of the culture. The sketch and recreation of my trolls are directly based on the amazing imagination of Brian Pilkington and his interpretation of trolls which has become the most recognizable version in media. The Boy, who features as the main character, wears traditional Icelandic clothing such as tail-cap or skotthúfa, and Búkolla is based on íslenskur nautgripur, Icelandic cattle.
Switch to the animation tab to see the full film.
Each puppet is made from a simple wire armature. The wireframes surround the edges of the puppet unlike a normal armature as the puppets were made for a top-down camera perspective. Around the armature, I sew a simple felt fabric base for the felt wool to grip onto. Finally, I simply needle-felt the wool on top of the fabric base and a puppet is made. The longest puppet, the cow tail, is 9 inches long and the smallest puppet, the miniature boy, is half an inch.
The trolls are segmented into distinct body parts: the head, arms, and legs. This design was primarily driven by having one fixed camera angle available so showing a full, detailed puppet of the trolls could potentially undermine the intended effect of how small the main characters are in comparison. This method also plays into the idea of scale by keeping the trolls’ full size ambiguous. We don't need to see every detail of the trolls' bodies to understand that they're enormous. Just showing parts of them that are disproportionately large compared to the characters, reinforces the idea that these creatures are far beyond human size.
