The Nightingale
"The Nightingale" is a stop-motion animation I created for the final project of my Junior year in college. It is a visual interpretation of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale of the same name. If you find yourself unfamiliar with this story or his writing, I encourage you to look into his work, especially if you love fantastic tales. 
I chose this story because of the ideas surrounding the relationship between nature and machine. Today, we turn to machines to make life easier and to a certain degree, solve our problems. There is a reliance on technology in society, however in this story, it is nature that prevails as the successful solution. This ultimately reminds the reader that while things may be updated, made seemingly easier, or conditioned to be "better," there is still a possibility that the original solution, idea or object could be more beneficial. 
I used Adobe Illustrator, Lightroom Classic, PhotoShop, and Premier Pro. 
A screenshot of the creation of the pieces in Adobe Illustrator, which I then printed, cut out, attached to cardstock and turned into mechanized pieces with the use of brads.
I built the framed shadow box out of foam core to make for a light design. The entire piece is 40 in. x 60 in. x 10 in. Each puppet is between 10 in. and 17 in.
These are photos from the process of piecing the puppets together and how they ended up looking when photographed on the stage. 1,222 still images went into the final stop-motion piece after editing, although about double that were taken throughout the entire process. 
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