“Animation can explain whatever the mind can conceive.” – Walt Disney

Throughout the process of growing up, I developed a strong liking towards the arts, specifically in the fields of sketching and painting. As such, within the three years of attending MACC, my passions were focused and directed towards experimenting with different mediums of art. This year, I want to focus my efforts on a specific field in the art industry. I remembered a fascination I had developed towards animation during my final year of middle school. At that point we were still deciding on which passion we wanted to pursue, I had already developed an interest in animation, but it never really seemed like the right choice at the time.

This year I knew I wanted to pursue a topic that would’ve expanded on the mediums of art that I picked up through my middle school passions projects. Again, I considered branching into studies of animation; I wanted to create pieces others could physically interact with. Immediately I jumped to flip book animation. Immediately I jumped to flip book animation. The reason why I ended up establishing flip book animation as my In-depth study was because I knew that it would help me work on fundamental techniques. Since I work a lot with sketching and painting, I’m required to direct my efforts into implementing finite details into my pieces. Many advantages come with this observational skill, but it also causes me to get caught up in details that wouldn’t matter in many situations. To create a flip book animation pages need to be created by hand; knowing how meticulous this process would be, I believed flip book animation would reduce the degree to which I pay attention to minute details. In the end, I thought that flip book animation would be a great expansion to the variations of art I’ve tried over the years.

Through my journey of studying flip book animation, I also hope to study the implementation of emotion, lighting, figure, posture, and facial structure. I’ve always felt more comfortable expressing ideas through the use of pictures compared to words. Through flip book animation, I hope to find my ‘voice’ and experiment with different ways of imbuing narratives into my animations. Throughout this journey, I will develop and build on analytical and observational skills, while also picking up time management and organizational skills along the way. I hope the goals I will fulfill my goals to the best of my abilities, and I hope that I will be able to delve deeper into the arts along the way.

Currently, I’m unsure of where I plan to work on my flip books; I will most likely collect sketched references and photos on my way home from school. As for the location of where I hope to pursue this topic, I would prefer to work in a space with lots of natural lighting, that is also well organized. I believe that depending on the number of papers I have on hand, I could work in a coffee shop, mostly because the atmosphere would be very comforting. Another positive of working in a coffee shop is the decor, as it can be very inspiring at times. I will mainly be practicing my craft at home and potentially at school, as the workspace will be larger and more open. Regarding where I’ll be meeting my mentor, I envision meeting in a very public space that can support and encourage public conversation such as a coffee shop like Starbucks.

A majority of my time working on my In-depth project will be spent after school hours, as it will be hard transporting all of my materials from home to school and vice versa. I will have the most amount of time to work on flip book animation during spring break. Because of the larger amount of time, I set many deadlines to be due over the spring break, as that’s when I’ll have the most time to fulfill them. I have yet to find a mentor, but I am in the process of finding one, because of that I’m unable to establish a time frame in which we will meet.

As I currently do not have a mentor, I have yet to know who I’ll be working with. I am looking forward to working on flip book animations this year, which is another reason why I need to find a mentor as soon as possible. Along with the teachings of my mentor, I will use many resources to expand my knowledge of lighting, atmosphere, facial expression, posture, and figure.

For my final product I hope to fully showcase both the technical and fundamental skills that I picked up throughout my journey of studying flip book animation. I hope that through this journey I’ll be able to create animations that give life to characters, and showcase meaningful narratives that are evidently shown throughout my works. I hope that even through the effortlessly flowing animations others are able to see the hard work that went into the creation of each individual page.

I believe that this project will be a great way for me to become more versatile as an artist. Flip book animation will be a great opportunity for me to step outside my comfort zone, experiment with new concepts, and chase my artistic development. I look forward to beginning my first In-depth project, and I hope that through this process, I’ll be able to further discover who I am as a person.