What Came first
A conceptual stop-motion film, designed and story-boarded by Hester Haslett-Venus, 2019.
The concept for this film was initially inspired by old images of my younger brother as a child. For many years we grew up with tame chickens as pets, that would sit on our laps and arms if ever you went into our back garden. My brother too was fascinated, as many little boys are, with dinosaurs. This inspired the initial character of ‘The Little Boy’, who goes into the garden to collect the chicken eggs, as he’s hunting he see’s one hatching. He rushes over to help it hatch, with no mother hen in sight he decides to bring it into the house, keeping it warm and fed in his bedroom. Over the course of little time however, the “chick” begins to rapidly grow, becoming ever more apparently not a chick. Eventually the “chick” grows to the size of an ostrich, and strongly resembles a dinosaur. In panic, the boy sneaks the beast out of the house and hides it in the garden, promising to return the next day with food. On return, it is has now doubled in size, a fully fledged, Chicken Dinosaur Dragon. From this I decided to design and realise the two characters to teach myself the foundations of stop-motion animation puppet making.
