The “Animistic Forest” in “Nothing Really Matters” was produced as a miniature stop-motion replacement animation using hand-cut paper trees and hundreds of identical laser-cut leaves.

The adapted multi-tiered structure housed three distinct crankie mechanisms, with the camera fixed above and focused downward. Each crankie was meticulously calibrated to move incrementally in relation to the other levels. This produced a parallax effect, where the trees closer to the camera moved at a quicker pace than those farther away, enhancing the illusion of depth in the final animation.

​ In the final presentation, this intricate miniature forest was magnified to a towering fifteen-foot height
through mapped projections, allowing Abigail’s life-sized shadow to traverse the miniature “Animistic Forest,”
creating a dramatic interplay of scale for storytelling.

The forest footage was produced by merged a traditional stop-motion animation method known as
Multi-Plane Stop-Motion Animation with a puppetry technique known as Crankie Puppetry.