During the Inside Out 2014 festival, an event commemorating artistic work, a large white hare appeared across a remote hillside on the South Dorset Ridgeway in Southern England. The hare, drawn with chalk, became one of the most iconic images of the festival. Artist Sarah Butterworth came up with the original idea, and over the course of a couple days, she chalked the hare on the hill with a team of helpers.

Photographer Alastair Nisbet loved Sarah’s idea. He decided to document the process by using iStopMotion to create a timelapse animation. As an iStopMotion connoisseur – he’d used the program to film the 2012 Olympics with students, results that were seen by thousands on the big screen – Alastair knew it would be the perfect tool.

“Because the hare was on a hillside, I had to film it from a few hundred meters away to get a good angle,” he says. “I wanted to be able to change the shot throughout the shoot for added interest, and the solution was to use iStopMotion with an HD video camera recording into my MacBook.”

It took Alastair two days to film. He shot one frame every five seconds to record two minutes of action per second, so after editing, the timelapse contained just over two hours of action.

“Within a few weeks, of course, the Hare had completely disappeared,” Alastair says. “You would never know it was there.”

Check out Alastair’s timelapse above, complete with commentary from Sarah on the hare’s significance!