MICA Student Work, Otherworldly: Stop Motion Puppets and Sets

Otherworldly is a stop motion puppet and set building course in the Animation department at Maryland Institute College of Art. Students designed the internal logic for the construction of fictitious worlds, linking shot composition not to individual objects, but objects in context. Students explored how material culture, scale and point of view can be used to explore power dynamics, identity, and mythology.

ABBY CALI

In the development of the project, I started to refocus this work to be more in line with my thesis work. The main character is Nonna, based off of my own Sicilian-American grandmother and my other older relatives who live on the island. The world is one of realism, where the viewer is unsure whether or not Nonna's magic is real, metaphor, or her own perception. She brings her pasta sauce to life, she can talk to her wolf, and her garden grows a little more than it ought to in the arid Sicilian valley. I'd like to show small vignettes of her life in and around her farmhouse, and capture the feelings of magic and countryside that I feel when I visit my own family there.

JESSE CLEM

Noah, a young man adjusting to adult life, decides to throw himself a birthday party in his apartment. After a period of ups and downs with his friendships, Noah is secretly afraid none of his friends will come to his party. In the lead-up to the event, he spends a lot of time fretting in his apartment, decorating for the party, and waiting in anticipation.

URIEL CRUZ

Having recently finished their last semester of college, Bara and their roommate must now pack their things and leave the apartment they leased out for the year. While packing, Bara reminisces about everything that happened in their room and is stuck in place. The bare room’s bittersweet memories attach themselves onto Bara, making it hard for them to leave.

KOFO FOLORUNSHO

In this dark universe created for giants, a small murderer is faced with the burden of solitude because she doesn't fit in. Only she is not alone; she is surrounded by parts of her victims. Her uncontrollable urge to kill beats her longing to make friends and companions. She is struck all alone in her macabre house filled with remnants of people she would like to call her "friends".

L.G. FORMAN

This is a forest environment in which a lone traveler, “The Spice Woman”, has set up camp. The forest environment of the set is just a small slice of a much larger wood dotted with relatively isolated towns and villages. The Spice Woman travels between these communities, never in one place more often than once or twice a year, and carries stories, flavors, messages, and medicines with her. She appears isolated but is an integral part of a large network of communities. I’m interested in capturing how she lives during her in-betweens, the character of the land she moves through, and how she interacts with that land. The land is represented by a god of the forest with whom she interacts.