The VALE OF aRALUEN
Project Overview
The idea, plan and evolution of the project in a nutshell
INtroduction
Our very first world build and animation project. The Vale of Araluen is an enchanted land that is home to our imaginary HQ as well as a multitude of magical creatures and plants. It was inspired by the beautiful forests of Scandinavia and ages old fairy tales.
The project will comprise of a series of short episodes about each of the creatures and their habitats - think David Attenborough documentaries but set in a fantasy world. The first releases from this project will be two small fragments; an introduction to the world and a trailer for future episodes.
We are in the middle of the preproduction phase of the project at the moment (April 2025). The planning, story development and the layout of the world are all complete, and we are currently working on the art style and specifics of the environment design.
You can follow along as we create this project and explore the production process of each episode via our production pages and journal posts below.
Plan
Our plan with this series is to work our way up to the more ambitious stories we have in the pipeline by focusing on different techniques, skills and aspects of modelling, rigging and animation in each episode. This approach should also help us build our visual and audio story telling skills as each episode will focus on a new character and require different ways of shooting the animation sequences and new thematic material for the music score.
Idea
This project began with the idea of creating an animated title sequence and some short B roll sequences for the first episode of our planned YouTube studio diaries.
This idea came to me after watching the latest videos from two of my favourite content creators in quick succession; Jonna Jinton and Roaming Wild Rosie. Their videos always have incredibly beautiful cinematic drone shots of the stunning Swedish forest that surrounds where they each live. I’ve known for a long time that I really wanted to have similar shots in our videos given our love of the natural world and what inspires us. But as we sadly don’t live somewhere quite so picturesque as Jonna and Rosie at the moment I knew this sort of footage was going to be hard to do without driving large distances on a regular basis. I was pondering this dilemma when the idea bloomed in my head to create an animated version of these beautiful sequences, but with a fairytale twist!
Evolution
The initial project plan was to do a drone flight over a small forest and a single turret castle for the title sequence and some more focused location and atmospheric shots of the castle for the B roll. However as we worked our way through the concept phase of the world build lots of new ideas for little character sequences in the various areas we were building kept popping into our heads. After a lot of discussion we decided to follow the creative flow and see where it took us. So Thea fully indulged her fantasy of living in a fairytale castle nestled deep in an enchanted woodland!
The world has now evolved to include a large castle and a valley where the forests, waters, glens and caves are home to all manner of magical creatures and plants. While the project has developed into a full series of episodes.
Production Pages
Explore our inspirations and how we have created the world and each release from The Vale of Araluen
Journal Posts
Follow our progress and adventures as we create The Vale of Araluen
Want to read more? Explore our Journal
Glossary
Find out more about the meanings behind the names we’ve chosen for places within the Vale and the creatures who call it home
Place Names
Araluen {a-rah-loo-en} : is an aboriginal word meaning ‘place of the singing waters’, ‘place of the lilies’. I think this word is the perfect name for our magical little sanctuary vale.
Visken {vhisk-en} : is derived from ‘Viskar’, a Swedish verb that means ‘to whisper’. Perfect for an enchanted forest that protects its inhabitants.
Seren {se-ren} : is the Welsh word for star (and also a girl’s name). I’ve often thought while looking up at huge mountains like their peaks point to certain special stars, so this is why our mountain range is called the Seren Mountains.
Moln {mol:n} : is the Swedish word for cloud. The perfect place to hide a lot of endangered magical creatures who are regularly hunted, a cloud valley.
Elva {ell:va} : is derived from the Norwegian word for rivers, elver. Loch Elva has multiple rivers that run into and out of it so it became known as the lake of rivers; Loch Elva.
Myths
These are a work in progress and we will reveal each one with their respective episode.
Creatures
These are a work in progress and we will reveal each one with their respective episode.
Plants
These are a work in progress and we will reveal each one with their respective episode.
The past couple of weeks have been all about landscaping, it has been quite a challenge but I think I’m getting there.