It’s hard to break out of a medium sometimes, it’s almost like a habit. I’ve been doing animation on paper so long that I think the challenge would be to just use a computer. There are many reasons why I choose to do it on paper rather than digital and I guess this use of the medium is intertwined with who I am as a person.
Through Family:
For one, my mother never liked video games and she separated animation from technology when I told her my interest. At some point, I played video games way too often as a pre-teen and stopped at the expense of my mother. I started to hate technology even when it was unnecessary and even when my mother’s discomfort was gone from her. For a time, avoiding technology was a goal for me and that would slowly erode overtime. Not because I saw the benefits, but because I didn’t have the ambition I used to have and that resulted in me putting more time on my phone rather than my work. So, doing animation on paper was to avoid the current present, where I spend too much time on technology and not do work.
Through Authenticy:
A second reason why I did animation on paper was the authenticity of it. I thought if something was older or had a history, it would be better from the current theme. When I did animation on paper, I felt like I was doing it as an art form rather than a work form. That it was physical and I could hold on to the paper and later on have a history with it. That is the same for frames from Disney movies. It almost felt like a storybook, where all the frames were a permanent imprint and you could flip/ read through them. Compare this to computer animation, where it was all code. To me back then, it wasn’t real. I also felt I would trap myself to do more flash cartoons and that, to me, didn’t sound authentic.
Though Preference:
The third reason was I didn’t want to learn about technology. It felt too complicated and I felt I was good at seeing movement. I tried to do animation on technology when I was younger, but I felt discouraged at the end. I also didn’t want to be an artist online and I assumed that would mean using digital. In the end, I thought it would be too much trouble as I thought I would only need the materials and just a good college. I didn’t think too much about it.
Part Two: The Present
Now, grown up, I can’t avoid technology. I already use it far more than I need to and I'm starting to ignore important factors of the industry. My mind has shifted towards doing technology in RISD so I could get a stable job as I always wanted. I’m even possibly thinking about doing other careers in case this one fails, such as being an architect as my family suggested. I’m not uncomfortable with being an online artist if it means getting to do what I want and I;m even interested in starting a studio that only uses computer animation and I could manage it. Only time will tell what I want to go into, but I know I can’t avoid this large factor of the industry, especially now with current events.
So I’m looking back on pieces of animation I did and I want to do a timeline showing my progression. Having a brief description of each piece.
