I did a little playing around this last week animating the littlest sister in On Our Own. I’ll never be a stop motion animator – mainly because I haven’t the patience, but also because my dolls’ movements have so much play in them that I simply can’t have them do a seamless motion. I’d move the arm a tiny bit, and then the elastic within would snap them back, and I’d have to somehow get them into exactly the same position they were in before. No matter – animation isn’t really what I’m after. But I do want to put enough photos together to get a sense of a character change.

For the backstory, Fern is very much missing her mom, and her two sisters have a plan to cheer her up. While Willow (the eldest) takes Fern out for a hike, Olive prepares a surprise.

Instead of looking for stock photos as a backdrop for the hike, I’ve pulled a few from the many, many hikes my husband and I took to see the waterfalls along the Columbia gorge. This particular backdrop is on a bridge near the top of Multnomah Falls. Putting it together made me a little teary – last summer we had a devastating fire along the Columbia gorge (teenage boy + fireworks = destruction of tens of thousands of our most beautiful landscapes, up here in the Pacific Northwest.) You can read about it here, but nothing can really communicate the immensity of the loss for those of us who have hiked through these forests.

Since I’m feeling teary already, another aside. These series of photos come from the hundreds of photos and videos I took along these trails while my mother (then in her late 80s and walking only with assistance) waited at home. At the end of the day, I’d come home and play her videos of waterfalls cascading and roaring, and we’d enjoy the hikes together.

Anyway, back to the story. This is a brief GIF animation of 5 photos I took of Fern, photoshopped onto a photo of my husband at the bridge at the top of Multnomah falls, and then turned into an animated GIF with Photoshops frame animation.

It’s meant to capture a moment when Fern, with spear in hand, starts to feel a little warrior blood in her veins.