APD WEEK 3: TIME

In the event that my video doesn't load: it is available at: https://youtu.be/ZGaTRyHsEyg

THEME: TIME

CONTEXT: 

I love studying and examining and swapping facts about animal timelines and long term evolution, I wanted to be a primatologist as a teenager and I drew almost exclusively cross hatched pen work growing up, so I took a lot of inspiration from victorian/edwardian animal study illustrations. I think that passion finds its way into a lot of my work, especially as an animator, it informs my fixations on anatomy, structure and movement. This intersects with my love of minimalist character design, both last semesters Studio 1 work and here especially . 

This week I was squarely exploring one of my comfort zones. I kept trying to convince myself to explore in an unfamiliar medium, but I was so stuck on watching Josh Schaffner's Experimental Calarts animation during the lecture and so enjoy making movement cycles that I found my way towards traditional animation. Another work that I think had an impact on my choice to work with simple, characterful animal movements is "Island" by Max Moertl. 

METHOD: 

Find an ideal Piece of music in Youtube Free Audio Library

Research Early Vertebrate history 

(Spend hours falling down the rabbit hole of the absurdity of nature. Did you know that all jellyfish are born as sea anemones?! Did you know that sharks are older than trees?!?!) 

Choose one key animal from each era that visually demonstrates what that era added to the evolutionary chain (In this case I chose: the first animal with a central nervous system, the first animal with a spine and skull to protect that central nervous system, first animal with an opening and closing jaw attached to that skull, the first animal with cartilaginous structures in its skull and fins, the first animal with bones in its fins and the first animal with joints in those bones)

Animate these animals to a 4 beats per 21 frames at 12fps time frame, roughly 

Overlay the looping symbols and edit them to chosen music.

RESPONSE

In this work I discussed time in the theoretical sense of huge non-human time scales as well as short iterations of looped time. I thought the two melded together interestingly because evolution really is billions of micro iterations of seemingly identical things over time. 

I loved returning back to classical animation for a moment, I adore it and it often brings the best out in my work. Even as an experienced animator I still learned by doing. This is the first time I've animated to a preset piece of music, it would definitely use improvement and I realize how little I know about using sound. Still, I learned about play as practicing and honing discipline (discipline in this case meaning setting beat specific time-restrictions for myself). I also experienced Play as an expression of self. Looking down the whole length of my work from highschool till now, this is no outlier, it is very me. I adore making walk/swim cycles, animating outlines over complex invisible shapes, calming music, liquid movements and biology. Experimenting with Animation is my favourite kind of play and I naturally express the core of my artistic self through it.

"Island" by Max Moertl:   https://vimeo.com/308876956