Tríd an Stoirm

A woman forces a Banshee to guide her to the Celtic realm of Death to bring her husband back to life.

Through The Storm is a majestic animated experience from Irish CG animator Fred Burdy. The bold storyline is about Alice confronting a Banshee when she is told about her husband’s death at sea. Baffled, Alice catches the Banshee’s magical necklace and forces her to travel together to the Otherworld, where Alice hopes to bring her husband back from the dead. But the Banshee, intrigued and amused by the human’s unusual behavior, has other plans.

One of the goals of this project was to revisit the Irish Celtic culture and mythology through a simple story – a woman visiting the Otherworld to save her husband from death. The subject allowed us to revisit fascinating folkloric elements, such as the Irish Banshee myths, as well as the classic Otherworld concept, and the attached idea of distant islands where heroes or dead people reside. Although, in our story the Other- world has become an empty, abandoned place – except for the Dead.

Fred Burdy’s main intention, however, was to tell an interesting, compelling, and visually rich story that any audience can connect to.

The visual and musical choices were driven by the will to communicate strong emotions to the audience – a difficult goal since CG has the reputation of being cold and lifeless. Our choice was to aim towards less realism to allow the audience to focus on the characters and the story. The lighting was kept simple and dramatic, the textures were stylized, and the animation hand-made instead of motion-captured.

An incredible effort was brought together by Fred and a multinational team of concept artists, CGI artists and sound designers. See the amazing process by the team and the enormous amount of detailed work put into this film!