Cicada Princess

Cicada Princess is a beautiful short film that uses CGI animation and is narrated by Stephen Fry set in a fairytale enchantment of the life of a Cicada.

Cicada Princess from Jesse Solomon Clark on Vimeo.

Cicada Princess was directed by Mauricio Baiocchi, in which he has worked on the visual effects of films such as 'Star Trek in to Darkness' and 'Looper'.  Interestingly this film was made entirely on self funding, sponsors and money donated by the public; the film production started from a kitchen table until they raised enough money to move to a larger studio in which over a hundred of contributors aided the process.  At first I thought that the video was a stop motion animation, however Baiocchi is strongly against the film being recognised as a stop motion, and wants it to be known that it is actually regarded as a puppeteered film. The film uses CG, modelling and rigging to create the movement of the puppets, and I found it inspiring through the low budget rigging that they had created themselves to made the wings and movement of the character.
To add depth to the composition, such as using multi-plane camera effect, by which they use a green screen to give the appearance of an environment beyond what the viewer sees. The film also uses a classical instrumental audio which matches the extremely detailed decor of the composition, puppets, panning, multi-plane, green screen.

The film inspires me through the amount of time taken to create the rigging for the character even though it was made with a low budget, the design is presented well and the plot still works with the composition. The making of Cicada Princess was really inspiring as it showed, in depth how they moved the puppets and how they created them, they used wire and sponge to pad out the body of the cicada. 

Cicada Princess Behind the Scenes from iBelieveInSwordfish on Vimeo.