The final project for Introduction to Animation required us to highlight an issue or topic that we feel passionately about – in our own creative way, within 30 seconds.
My mind immediately went to a topic I feel very strongly about – the beauty and sadness of sickness and disease. I took reference of various illnesses and wanted to convey them in both a beautiful and gruesome way. I used one of my favourite non—fictional books ‘The Sick Rose’ (Richard Barnett, 2014) as the framework of these diseases, and drew inspiration from the different illustrations. Many of the sicknesses pictured in the book are pre-modern, and it was fascinating to see how much cancer affected the body in the 1800’s compared to the post-modern era. I used my own sounds (other than the music) to create a sense of ‘place’ within my animation (e.g., the cigarette lighter and bells).
A major hurdle is that I struggled to make my characters look more ‘animated’. I intended for them to be mostly static to achieve an illusion of someone who is dead, however more suggestions of movement would be more effective.However, working on a topic that I’m passionate about felt very rewarding, and using previous lessons in Introduction to Animation helped a lot with my making.