As Walt Disney said, “Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive”. For this reason, I chose to do animation for my in-depth project in grade 9. More specifically, I will express different moods and characters through digital animation with stick figures. I chose to do this because for me, animation is a way to channel my creativity and express myself with stories from my mind.
I always think of new ideas that I just want to put down some where. I am constantly doodling on papers, and although my drawings are not close to okay, I still enjoy doing it. However, my goal for in-depth will not be improving my drawing skills, but animation. I will try to express different characters moods and their development using stick figures. I will be doing this digitally, and most likely on Macromedia flash 8.
I wanted to work on specifically characters because I am always thinking of new character ideas. I once have tried to work on novel writing, for the same reasons I chose to do animation. Because I wanted to express myself and develop characters, but I quickly found all the in-between on writing stories boring. For example, writing word after word after word. This is why I hope to have more fun doing animation, while still practicing and improving a skill that could perhaps benefit me in the future. I also want to express my stick figures through movements and action rather than words, because when animating actions and movement, every frame matters to express the mood and what the character is like effectively.
So far, I have not yet found a mentor, or to be honest looked into finding one to much. This is something I will work on and hopefully I will have a mentor in no time.
The process of learning different ways to express mood and to just improve my overall animation skills on my software will take a long time and be tedious. But alongside the mentor I will have, I will also use websites and YouTube videos as sources to enhance my learning and enrichment.
For my final project, I hope to create one animation that introduces many stick figures that are very different and diverse. This animation will hopefully be projected up onto a projector screen on in-depth night.
Overall, I cannot wait to start my in-depth project, to develop a way to better express myself and my ideas, to learn from people and other resources, and to enhance my skills in my area of choice, animation.