Animator's Statement

The stories I have created throughout the course of this semester each share a common theme in relating profoundly to my past experiences of playing football.  In high school I played Wide Receiver, whose main role is, on offense, to either catches passes from the Quarterback or to block players on defense.  As an animator, the experience has resounded in my studies as both sports and animation deal with the particularities of movement.  Sport explores the intricacies of how the human body moves in order to achieve a feeling of victory that every athlete strives so excruciatingly hard for.  Every single movement, from the position of the feet, angle of the torso, to even the tilt of the head plays a key part in an athlete’s performance in a game and could easily be the difference between winning and losing.  Going through this thought process that comes from the years I spent running track, playing volleyball, basketball and football, I feel like I go through those same movements over again as I recreate a character or object moving through space.

Spending years playing sports I not only accrued a large amount of experience in the physicality aspect but also accrued quality instances of narrative in observing the lives of others and how sports played a part in directing the course of their lives.  From this body of history, I was able to draw narrative into the assignments given this semester, each exploring a different aspect of sports as well as exploring the various conventions in which stories are told.

            What had a large impact in improving, as I feel like I have, the work I produced is Joseph Campbell’s, “A Hero with a Thousand Faces.”  In the book he describes The Hero’s Journey, which provides a general outline that can apply to nearly all non-experimental narrative works.  It involves a main character and the trials he or she must go through in order to complete their journey.  Each of my stories features a main character, usually a football player, being thrust into action due to the events taking place on the football field.  Although, I ran into a debate at the development of each story in trying to understand what motive does my character have other than obviously trying to win the game that they are currently in.  Asking this question each time gradually made my stories more dynamic, also giving it futher reason to be animated as opposed to being composed as live action, which is a debate in itself.

            As I have learned plenty this semester I still hope to improve on several of the concepts that have been touched on.  The shot progression in some works I am happy with, although there are plenty I could consider revising or re-thinking in order to fully give clarity to what I am aiming to say in my work.  Also the concept of non-linear narrative is a field I did explore but hope to keep working to understand as many strong pieces use this very well.  Most importantly, character development is key in nearly every story and with the works I produced I did touch on it but it still leaves much to be desired for me.