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

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Final project

My piece, entitled “The Descent of Snowman”, outlines the evolution of a previously unknown form of life: the snowman. The animation is in the form of an advertisement for a larger documentary on this creature, detailing its creation, culture and extinction. Created entirely in Photoshop and was assembled in Windows Movie Maker, my animation shows the evolution snowman-kind, beginning with the creation of the first snowman. It gives a glimpse of their culture as well as their eventual destruction—caused by their discovery of fire.

My piece deals with the ideas of creation and life as odd and unique, bringing in an entirely different form of life that was created through a completely different means. The falling of a single snowflake at the beginning of the piece completes the first snowman. New snowmen are then created by the old ones in the usual way, by rolling snow into balls and adding features. Life for this creature then, is not something active and energetic, but a step by step process that could be in an instruction book. These differences are the draw for the “commercial” aspect of my animation, its “strangeness” is accented by them. Activity— fire—is something strange and frightening and inherently destructive instead of creative. The figurative “sparks” of life and ingenuity are actual in this animation and cause snowman’s eventual extinction.