During the pandemic lock-down of 2020 I decided to branch out and take some online courses in animation. I learned how to do stop motion animation and the first one I did was “Atlas Meets Sisyphus”. Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology who angered Hades, King of the underworld, by cheating death twice. For this he was condemned by the gods to roll a boulder uphill and whenever it was close to the top it would roll back down so he had to do it again and again for all eternity. Atlas was one of the pre-Olympian gods called the Titans in Greek mythology. His punishment for participating in the War of the Titans against the victorious Olympians was to carry the heavens on his shoulders for all eternity. Since they shared a similar fate, I decided to see if they could help each other out in my animation.
The puppets were cut from Canson Mi-Teintes® paper and the parts that had to move were separated. I wired them back together with copper wire and tape. I needed 3 puppets to effect the turning and walking away movement of Atlas and 1 puppet for Sisyphus. The background was also made of Canson paper with a collaged owl on a branch where Atlas could hang the heavens while he helped out Sisyphus. A couple of small LED lamps provided the lighting and I shot the whole thing at night to keep the lighting consistent.
Using Filmora Video Editor for the post-production work, I filled out the stage with a scene of Greek temples and the face of a female Greek goddess looking down on the scene from the clouds above. A friend with a deep voice was the voice-over actor for Atlas on the audio track. I played his voice backwards adjusting the volume to get a dramatic groan when Atlas lifted the boulder and hung up the heavens.
It was quite a bit of work for a 19-second video but one thing I learned was that 19 seconds is a long time in animation! Before I made the wired puppets, I experimented with cutting out some Sisyphus puppets in fixed positions and photographing them. I abandoned that idea because it didn’t lend itself well to the more involved character interaction I was looking for. Not wanting to waste them, I used them for another shorter animation called “Sisyphus – The Prequel”. I used rocks to make a mountain and animated them also. One particularly malevolent rock keeps knocking the boulder back down the mountain. A black and white version with added rain and thunder sound effects makes Sisyphus’ predicament even more pitiful.
It was fortunate that Atlas came along and took pity on him. In “Atlas meets Sisyphus”, Atlas hangs up the heavens on a tree branch and goes to the mountain to wedge the boulder in place so it doesn’t roll down again. Sisyphus is so grateful to be liberated from his own punishment, he gives a goodbye wave and goes off with Atlas so he doesn’t have to shoulder the burden of the heavens alone.