[Animation] Autobiography

This is a week project I did in University, we had to make an animation in which the theme was an autobiographical animation which we had to make using in medium we wanted. I had a few ideas for this project, originally I was going to do me at uni having flash backs to my early life, but I thought that'd be too much of a big project for our week deadline, so I ended up doing something simple with not much animation in it, drawings of me from age 0 to 18. Below is the animation:

The animation didn't turn out as good as I had planned it to be, I wish there was more movement in it, after all it is an animation project. I think that as an autobiographical animation it gets the point across well showing myself from ages 0 to where I am now, showing what I am like and what I look like in cartoon. The music fits really well, although it isn't royalty free as it is an Original Soundtrack from the anime 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'. The sound effects used in it are from the classic 'Super Mario World' for the SNES console, I used these because when it came to getting alternative sound effects my internet had died and the only sound effects I had on my computer where from games, so I made due with what I had and used them. Personally I think it worked quite well with the animation as it shows I have a love for games.

I found this project quite easy to do as I have a good knowledge of Flash animation about me, although I feel I could have made it alot better if I had alot more time at hand. There are some unfinished scenes in the animation which I am disappointed at for not finishing, such as the scene when I am 6 years old, I was suppose to be in a family photo, but I ended up sitting in a room with another boy (Yet to be named) sat next to me. I used that scene to show my love for video games instead of the family portrait. The ending scene when there is a train going by was a quick way to end the animation, the train animation was taken from an earlier Flash animation I made, originally I wanted to create a whole new train scene, but ended up using the scene from my older Flash animation; A Day in the Life of Rudy Burton.

The animation is an introduction to myself, I show this by having myself from the youngest age to my current age. By doing this I used memories of my childhood such as my first haircut, the first day of school and other things, I also used things I used to enjoy doing too, such as playing games. I don’t remember what I looked like as a child or the clothes I used to wear so I had to guess on some ages. Although from the age of 11 I could easily remember what I used to wear due to it being my school uniform for most of the ages upwards until I went to college. I tried to make my hair a key factor in the animation, getting longer as the years went by, I rarely cut my hair so because of this it gets longer the older I get. At age 16 I gain my glasses, this shows I have changed due to my eye sight becoming bad. Another thing to notice after each year is that my ear stretcher gets larger, It took me around 3 or 4 years to get it to its final stage so I wanted it to get bigger bit by bit for a few years until it stops growing at age 16. I also changed the room I am in for most of the animation bit by bit, showing how it changed over time; first with the shelf, then with the TV, after than the VHS in which then later turns into a DVD player.

I wasn’t really influenced by many existing videos or animations, although I was inspired by the animation “Life of Homer Simpson” which is a parody of the original “Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years”. I was inspired more by the Simpsons parody than the original because In the Simpsons version it shows Homers life from when he was a small child all the way to where he is now, it also doesn’t go from age 1 to 39, it jumps stages showing a little clip of him at that age. Whereas in the original it shows himself everyday from the year 2000 all the way up to 2006. I wouldn’t be able to make an animation like that unless I had alot of time and alot of photos of my childhood, the Simpsons version of that video seemed more feasible to do so I tried it out on paper, I liked how it looked and started the animation process.

The intention of the animation was to show myself from a young age and to compare how I was back then to how I am now. I wanted to get the point across that I enjoyed games as a child and enjoyed having fun rather than studying and doing exams. I wanted to show that my hair (even as a child) was still pretty long, and even back then I didn’t want to have it cut. The sound effects used are from a video game, this is to show that I enjoy video games and try to reference them or use their sounds, images or videos to make parodies or fan videos. Although in this case I used the sound effects for the lettering, in which isn’t really referencing them as unless you played the game you wouldn’t know the sound was from a game.

My Autobiographical animation is represented differently to other autobiographical animations/films such as the YouTube video “Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years.” In the video he represents himself using photos he’s taken everyday for 6 years. There is no voice over but there is background music which is a piano piece, the music isn’t upbeat or happy but more serious. I used happy music to represent my happy life.

“Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.” (Hall, S: (1997), p.15)

This quote relates to Noah’s video as in my opinion, he uses the music to represent his outlook on life as serious and not something to joke about. In the video he doesn’t smile or look sad, he has a serious look on his face. I chose to represent life in a happy way. The music in the animation is happy and upbeat and the colours are bright and cheerful. I chose to do my animation like this to represent my optimistic outlook on life. In comparison, Noah’s video uses serious music and represents his life as a serious one. However, there are some similarities that both the videos have, they both have different backgrounds as they get older and the camera shows the face and a little of the body from above. Although it makes him look more serious as we get a closer look into his face, as he pulls a serious, sad look into the camera.

The next time I use Flash as an animation technique I will be sure I have enough time for the project I have in mind, by doing this I can make the animation quality overall better. I will also try to use royalty free music so I can use my animations in the future without the threat of a lawsuit hanging over my head.

----------EDIT----------

Due to royalty free issues I changed the Soundtrack into something else using the website Freeplaymusic.com.  This was because I was asked if I wouldn't mind putting this animation onto the University website, I agreed to it but alas had to change the audio into copyright free music. I think it still is as good as it was although the previous music was fit to the animation, although in its own way also fits. I tried to chose the same genre of music being it happy and upbeat and I think works really well with the animation. Below is the second animation: