Week 1 Day 2: Motion to Create Meaning & Intro to Flash

We opened class by exploring motion as a means of creating meaning or narrative with some modified 18th century toys. We were told to pick a social issue (I chose gender issues) & create two designs using the toys.

For the first, we used a thaumatrope, which has an image on both sides of a card, which is attached to two pieces of string.  The card is twirled & combines the two images into one.  For my thaumatrope, I wrote the word "EQUAL" on one side, removed the Q, instead making it a composite of the popular male & female symbols derived from the Classical symbols for Mars & Venus.  If I could make one change, I would have kept the full word "EQUAL" on both sides of the card, one using the male symbol as the Q & the other using the female symbol.  I realized after the fact that the conglomerate symbol was already associated with intersex & transgender.

The second was a praxinscope, which uses a series of pictures, a round-based contraption, & a mirror to create what appears to be a moving animation. For mine, I decided to symbolize the struggle for power between the genders, in the end providing a solution.

After completing our projects, we learned about the animating program Adobe Flash & began a short project using a short continuous line to represent some character or personality.  I decided to evoke sneaky.

Storyboarding for sneaky representative line animation