Where the Water Meets the Woods is an animated video installation housed in the historic Belle Isle Aquarium, in what used to be a shark tank. Belle Isle is home to a rare forest ecosystem called the wet-mesic flatwoods. My goal was to highlight the efforts that are underway to preserve this unique forest system and to bring community awareness to how special it is, through the use of animation and design.

For this project, I was tasked to create an exhibition that was a playful take on how the flora and fauna of the wet-mesic forest interact and change through the seasons. Animation style was based off of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar but incorporated real images of animals, so visitors on Belle Isle know what the animals really look like when they encounter them in the Isle’s flatwoods.