Firouzeh
Sedighi

The "Excellence" animation is my final project during my bachelor's degree studies at Shiraz Art Institute of Higher Education. It is is a stop motion animation and is a coming together of different skills and techniques I've learned during my years of study and my work experience. My University supervisor at that time was Mr. Maziar Mohammadinezhad and I got score of 20 out of 20 for the project. 

​

The idea and story line is inspired by the story of "Simorgh" the fictional bird which is frequently mentioned in classical and modern Persian literature particularly as a metaphor for God in Sufi mysticism. In the 12th century Conference of the Birds, Iranian Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar wrote of a band of pilgrim birds in search of the Simurgh. In the poem, the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their king, as they have none. The hoopoe, the wisest of them all, suggests that they should find the legendary Simorgh, a mythical Persian bird roughly equivalent to the western phoenix. The hoopoe leads the birds, each of whom represent a human fault which prevents man from attaining enlightenment. When the group of thirty birds finally reach the dwelling place of the Simorgh, all they find is a lake in which they see their own reflection. This scene employs a pun on the Persian expression for "thirty birds" (si morgh).

​

I started with the idea and writing the script followed by creating storyboards for the animation: