Piper Haswell 2025

Abstract

Blind Dragonfly is a 2-minute stop-motion animated silent short film. It adapts the story of ‘The Gift of the Magi’ by O Henry, featuring two anthropomorphic bug characters, Scarlett and Iris. Its primary focus was to experiment with non-verbal communication, using the techniques of silent era film and early stop-motion animation to convey this to an audience. The animation follows Scarlett, a crimson marsh glider, as she realizes she forgot about her anniversary. This results in a scramble in order to get her partner, Iris, something memorable to show her care. The film includes 4 stop-motion sets and 2 fully articulated wire puppets. It was animated entirely in the program Dragonframe, using 24fps on 2s. It has animation shot on both down shooters and 3D sets, and all shots are composed based on 4:3 ratio, calling back to silent film. It uses both replacement animation and erasure animation techniques for facial expressions. The film was edited using both Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. A score of music was chosen after animation was complete, to emulate an aspect of old silent films. Blind Dragonfly takes inspiration from several places, but primarily early stop-motion animation and silent film. The characters were directly influenced by the film The Cameraman’s Revenge, reflecting in their bug origins, as well as the general imperfectness of early animation, the implied hand of the artist. Its composition also takes a lot from silent films, including the aforementioned aspect ratio and music choices, as well as the use of intertitles. Blind Dragonfly was primarily created as a way to build experience in a variety of stop-motion animation techniques, as well as to become a portfolio piece for character animation.