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

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Final project

Nobody can teach you the value of your own imagination. The kindergarten-coaching idealists did their best to brand upon your blossoming consciousness even the slightest semblance of good old-fashioned creativity. The spinster kook that taught your seventh-grade ceramics class tried her damndest to coax those by-then ancient ruins of inspiration out of you. And it’s cynical, sure, but also correct to assert that these efforts are entirely in vain. Imagination is something you’ve got to unearth for yourself, whether during those brain-bending sessions of self-discovery the education system calls art class, or through quiet observation of a universe twinkling its way through the ventricles of time. And the wonders of this so-called “imagination”, in all its cliché glory, abound.

“All the Animals” isn’t just a short film about imagination, as you, my insightful reader, have likely begun to assume. “All the Animals” is also a product of imagination; it is imagination in its purest form, with no rules, no guidelines to relegate the creation to mere prompt fulfillment. But find no self-righteous “concept explanation” here; the film’s message (if any) is purely that, once cultivated, imagination makes reality. The acting hands, the paint, the perhaps technologically simplistic metamorphosis of flesh into felt – they represent a process by which we animate the world around us. Nobody can teach you the value of your own imagination. But I, dear reader, know the value of mine, and this juvenile, primitive, and entirely delightful piece is perhaps its finest output to date.