The Pitiful Players is a concept that I came up with in the spring of 2023 when I was first learning to animate. Previous animated projects that I had created were animated using a technique that was very similar to the way a puppet is manipulated, so I decided to lean into that characteristic and make a cast of marionette puppets. 

My original idea was to create a set of puppets that could function as a marionette theater troupe. Each puppet could be dressed differently in a standardized set of costumes, and they could hold various props, so I could reuse the same characters to perform different shows. Their design was influenced by the styles of artists like Tim Burton, and the stories were influenced by the the works of the Grimm Brothers'. Every Pitiful Players short would feature a basic story with a dark twist, and the production design of each performance would be dilapidated and dark.

"Le Romance" is a sort of proof-of-concept piece. It was created as my final project for my Design Foundations II class. I drew the all of the individual pieces and characters in Adobe Photoshop and animated them in Adobe After Effects. It is a very simple demonstration of what The Pitiful Players could be with more time and development. 

The addition of music and sound effects helped to set the scene for the viewers. The music and soundscape place the viewers at an outdoor, medieval puppet show. The audience noises amplify the emotions I intended for the performance to invoke and assist in building the immersion of the sound design. 

As my skills in animation and sound design develop, I would love to revisit this project, and even create new shorts with these characters.