Press for Choice

Following up on “Navigation of Life,” I was given instructions to re-enact an existing piece. Everyone had differing amounts of knowledge and connection to the original piece that the instructions were based on. My work was completely isolated; I didn’t see the original piece, and I don’t even know its name. Perhaps I’ll in time learn what the original piece was. However, my instructions were completely vague anyway. I was given a list of words to think about (including “satire,” “capitalism,” and others) with the one and only step: “Do something.” I decided to make a short, sketchy animation.

At 24 frames per second, with less than a week, and with over half of the piece being animated on ones, this took up quite some time…especially since I didn’t use Flash. I decided to use Pencil2D, a fork of the original Pencil (the original has been abandoned, and the fork is exactly the same plus a few much-needed features). With more time (perhaps a month), I would have made the animation longer, more complex (the door was originally going to slide open, with a cavalcade of colors inside), and not silent. However, with the time and constraints I had, I am incredibly proud of this little six-second, sardonic piece of animation.