Zine Artist Statement!

My intention for this project was to create a faithful reinterpretation of the classic 1987 film, The Princess Bride, in the medium of a flipbook. I took 24 frames from the final kiss scene from the film and depicted a different scene from the film over each frame so that the flipbook would show the two main characters kissing when quickly flicked through, but the flipbook would tell the entire story beginning to end when flipped through slowly. The cover and the binding were inspired by the physical prop used by the grandfather in the original film, giving the flipbook the illusion of existing within that original book. The Princess Bride is full of a variety of different emotional beats, including moments of fun, action, romance, horror, and timelessness, which prompted me to design each page to use a different art style and digital art tool fitting to those specific emotions. This resulted in a flowing intrigue throughout the story. It was important for me that the flipbook would accurately represent the love depicted between Westley and Buttercup in the animation, but also accurately represent the long journey that the two went through in order to reach this final moment in the film. The flipbook also prioritizes showing the journeys of the side characters as well, considering their importance parallel to the main storyline. The entire sequence is concluded by the final two pages, the first of which is taken directly from the scene itself, the second showing the quote narrated by the grandfather character during the kiss scene. I found the project overall successful but I learned a lot about the pacing of animation through this process, and if I were prompted to try it again, I would try to refine the quality of the art techniques I utilized and rethink the pacing of the animation as well.