HUM 203: The World in Motion, Animation in Theory and Practice

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Final project

I created this piece to play with the idea of time and its importance in the animated. My character goes on a journey in search of the true meaning of time. He first stops in the prehistoric era where the “time” at this era revolved around the dinosaurs. Time for dinosaurs was perhaps measured in how long it took for them to finish a meal! Next my character travels to the medieval period, where “time” was perhaps measured by the length of wars and battles. Finally, my character travels to a comic land where comics are “animated” in the sense of imagination through closure, but stand still in reality. The idea of time through the perspective of comics is portrayed with my animation.

I used Adobe Photoshop throughout the project working with gif animation. For all components of the animation, I created everything digitally. However for my comic characters, I sketched 2 character designs and scanned them into the computer. These characters I drew to contrast the lines and surfaces of comics and the animated. I kept William Blake’s concept of the diagonal when designing the characters and this can be seen in my animation.

Through animation I am able to portray time in several different ways in which without animation, I would not be able to. Time is all around us, but may be different for each and every one of us. What determines if something is animated? Without the notion of time, this question can not be answered.