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

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Final project

In my animation project, which I named The Ways and Dreams of Revolutions, I am dealing with issues of art and imagination as historically tied to the development of animation itself. I am interested in seeing how we as humans can invent such inorganic mechanisms, yet ultimately use these same tools to create something very organic, creative, and ultimately beautiful. To express this, I dealt with the transformations of various landscapes and objects to contrast what is industrial and what is natural. I find the interplay between these two aspects of the world we live in now seem to be increasingly important as we are pulled to further development of the world and the struggle between what is man made and what is earth given.

To achieve this sort of dream-like feel between the various morphings, I used fading between scenes and objects extensively, as well as experimenting with various textures and filters. Ultimately, since I created all of my animation in Photoshop, I felt that the more hand drawn feel even further reinforced the discussion that is central to my animation. Ideally, The Ways and Dreams of Revolutions would be played in a continuous loop, highlighting the ebb and flow of how humans are constantly being pulled between an ideal, individual, and personal state of being, and a more constraining, dehumanized, and material society. The music included is a reference to Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil, as I feel my animation is concerned with some of the same themes as his work.