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

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Final project

This year’s spring has been a time for immense personal growth for me; changes, first break up, heartache, frustrations and search for my identity carried out with sleepless nights. Through all of confusions and emotional experiences, now I’ve come to a clearer awareness of who I am as an independent being. I wanted this animation piece to be a candid reflection of this awakening experience of mine. Integrating the question about time taught in class with my own experience, I tried to portray the meaning of time passing through individual’s life and its role on one’s change through a medium of surreal symbolism and repetition. The concept I had in mind while creating this piece was dance choreography. Through accumulation, rhythm, juxtaposition and movement of vivid visual elements, I intended to show the story without telling. Images used in this piece are personal photos of mine, enhanced in color and texture in Photoshop to strengthen their visual effect.

The bicycle represents myself and others as well. For such reason, the main character is not given a distinct trait but rather drawn as an extension of a bicycle. Seemingly repetitive and industrial movement of spinning bicycle wheel is revelation of time as a willful force that brings forth the change, the actual that brings forth the virtual. The road past is history, the ahead future. Memories from the past have constituted who we are now, the choices we make in the present determines who we will become in the future. Past, present and future are virtually coexisting in us, and represented in this piece as the continuous road and the girl and the bicycle. The girl is soul, the bicycle embodiment. Together, they keep on moving to the future embracing the change to come. And I, too will move on, seizing the life passing me by with vigor that surpasses the road.