Artist Statement

  Our Finished Animation Project!

It was a challenging project, but we completed it! Our artist statement follows...

Artist Statement

Kelsey Clapp &
Christina Stephenson

The Tale of Two Wolves

For our Flash Animation project, we created a retelling of a traditional Cherokee tale, The Tale of Two Wolves.  We wanted to animate the tale in such a way that it was reminiscent of how storytellers from all different cultural traditions share tales.  The collaborative nature of this project meant that we needed to rely on stylistic devices to create a sense of cohesion.  

We each cut silhouettes out of black paper and used them as our characters.  Each of us chose to design one of the wolves in a way that we thought best embodied their characteristics.  Kelsey animated the “bad wolf,” and Christina animated the “good wolf.”  Our goal was to create distinct characters, and at the same time, for them to have a similar look and feel, and with the cut paper, we achieved that.  We utilized a lot of the same background images as well, and relied on a dynamic color scheme to convey emotion. We also wanted to convey emotion by using sound.

An appropriate sound was important to us.  We wanted to create an authentic feel for our story, and so we chose to include a Native American flute soundtrack.  The subtle music successfully conveys a sense of the cultural setting as well as the emotional feeling we were looking for. 

While we chose a traditional Cherokee tale, we allowed ourselves ample room to explore how to incorporate original artwork.  We did not want to simply appropriate images and words from the Cherokee culture, and we tried to be as sensitive to the fact that appropriation carries ethical consequences.  Overall, what we created is a unique retelling of a wonderful tale.