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

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Final project

“Anti-Industry” is an animated piece that was inspired by the writings of Scott Bukatman on the industrialization of animation and what animation means in a mechanized world. I took the ideas that he introduced and made a visual display of them. The technique of animation through the use of Photoshop is the means by which this piece was produced. The reason for using this system was to expand and display my newfound knowledge of how to animate using a computer system. The goal of this piece is to demonstrate literally that animation breaks down the boundaries of industrialization. By giving inanimate machines a personality and have that personality be defiant of their mechanized world, this piece aims to show how, through animation, a lifeless object can destroy the very orderly world of a mechanized society.

This is an animation of machines that are a part of an assembly line production that have the monotonous task of placing screws into the corners of slabs of metal as they move down a conveyor belt. These machines, however, get sick of this monotonous task and they rebel against this mechanized world that they are a part of. So, the machines proceed to destroy the plant and escape to a secluded beach where they will never be forced to work on an assembly line again.

I created this piece with the hope of giving the audience a visual representation of the concept that animation can destroy an industrialized world because this is a very intriguing concept to think about. This animation is just a literal representation of how to explain the essence of this concept without expanding into the very details that Bukatman explores in his essay. My hope is that the audience will grasp the monotony of the machines’ task and will then be able to see how an animated world creates the chaos that eventually causes the plant to be closed.