THE COYOTE & THE MILKY WAY 

Visual Thinking Module

2023

During my first semester studying illustration with animation, we were tasked with creating a 20 second long animated short based on a folktale from anywhere in the world. This was to introduce us to the fundamentals of animation and storytelling by getting us to create character designs, environment and setting concepts, storyboards, and basic animatics. 

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For my choice of folktale, I decided to go with the Navajo tale of the Coyote and Black God creating the Milky Way. I chose this one specifically because every retelling of this story that I could find painted such a vivid mental image of the mischievous Coyote stealing the Black God's gems and tossing them into the sky to create a swirl of stars.