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Ashley Man and His Machine

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My final project turned out completely different from what I had first imagined. I decided to focus my animation on the ways that human beings can come to be like machines. The main point of the animation is to show how people can be conditioned and trained to imitate machine-like qualities—whether it be at school, at work, or within social networks. There is a specific scene that shows how people can be cut up and made to fit a specific formula, much like a machine. The woman is literally chopped into pieces and given a new appearance—one that is generic enough for multiple people to personify. There are also football players that carry the woman off multiple times, which can be interpreted to show how most people can be persuaded into many different roles. I chose to use football players to show this because firstly, they represent something strong and convincing and secondly, because football is a huge part of American culture.

I learned a lot in the process of making my first animation, and I applied some of those techniques to this project. Firstly I used a surface (a piece of black material) to work on that wasn’t as slippery as paper. This helped to prevent pieces of collage from blowing away or getting lost in the shuffle. I also used A LOT of rubber cement to adhere pieces to each other. Rubber cement is nice because it isn’t permanent.

I wanted to focus more so on the visual aspect of this animation, so the audio track is minimal. The audio I did add, however, was mostly taken from inside of factories. The primary track that plays throughout the piece was taken from the inside of a sweatshop, so there are sewing machines and generators playing throughout the piece. I would honestly like to add something more to the audio track, but at this point I’m satisfied with what I have.