Animalia: Animated Stories of Collapse, Calamity and Departure

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This is an enchanting short trailer for Animalia, a dark and beautifully surreal Illustrated fairy-tale. The animation was created by my friend Ryder Cooley, and was brought to life by Bart Woodstrup; the music is by Fall Harbor. The collaborative film is a work in progress.

Musician and multi-disciplinary artist, Ryder Cooley, explains some of the ideas that inspired the project:

“Exploring metaphors of flight in response to violence & war, Animalia invokes visions of human-animal relations, secret bee societies and haunted circus scenes. When a girl falls under the spell of a mystical deer, she achieves flying powers by renouncing her humanity and becoming an antlered deer creature. By appropriating the masculine power symbol of the buck rack and reinserting it onto feminine characters, Animalia blurs the divisions between masculine/feminine identities and human/animal forms.”

These still photographs are from a live performance of Animalia in Oakland last year.