Ashley Stoddard Transports ‘Willow’ to Africa, Sends ‘Swan Lake’ to India and Designs ‘The Subtle Knife’ [Art]

While various creators have been recasting Snow White as amnesiac grade school teacher or Kristen Stewart in shining armor, Ashley Stoddard had already sent the story off to Egypt, where the evil queen carries a cobra and the dwarfs are replaced with Hittites. (Presumably, the heroine goes through a chromatic name change.) She also gives Willow a continental shift, nudging the aesthetic influences from the European to the African. But most gorgeous of all is her reimagining of Swan Lake, which sets the Tchaikovsky ballet in India.

I've always been rather partial to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, and I was disappointed that The Golden Compass (or The Northern Lights to the Europeans among you) received such a flat on-screen adaptation. I dig Stoddard's take on the characters, especially the way she renders the knife's ragged gateway between worlds. But if I were to choose one of Stoddard's projects to bring to the big screen, it would easily be her Swan Lake. She created this concept art series for her senior thesis project at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, and you can see the full spread on her portfolio site and her blog. Currently, she's applying her magnificent sense of color and architecture as a background painter at the animation studio Titmouse.