Digital Flash Animation Artists' Statement

Today's the day! Our animations are done, and we will be combining all of our scenes today. Hooray!
Here is our combined artists' statement:

“A Number-ful Surprise”

Artists’ Statement

     The idea behind our project was to use a narrative of something that a child can imagine or relate to in order to learn something. In our case, we wanted to be able to teach the numbers 1-10, by introducing them sequentially into a storyline. We came up with a fun, catchy short film that captured the spirit of playfulness. There is a balance between the monotony of taking each number one at a time and a lively approach to number teaching.

     In order to achieve this idea, we had to consider the following: how can we teach something, such as counting, in a fun way, what kinds of experiences can children respond to, and how can we be original in presenting a commonly taught subject matter? To keep the story fun and lighthearted, we made the storyline an adventure that a young boy takes to arrive at his own birthday party. We animated the numbers, giving them an aspect of cuteness, and giving children a way to really interact with and be interested in them.

     Incorporating the numbers into our event, we created a storyboard wherein Tommy, the young boy, is approached by the various animated numbers (behaving like friends), in their sequential order, who will lead him to the party, and celebrate with him. This is something kids in our culture can relate to as birthday parties are a common occurrence.

     Conceptually the challenge of this project laid within focusing our main idea into three short clips, in figuring out a new program to actually put our ideas into an actual animation, and working to integrate three different people’s ideas into one short story. After we came up with our concept, we had to adjust our ideas and “visions” of how it would look based on what we were able to actually do in Flash and to keep the flow of our animation. There was a lot of trial-and-error learning that occurred in trying to put our ideas into practice.

     On the other end, some of the technicalities we went through to achieve our goal film was that almost every background had to be pieced together in Photoshop from multiple images, the number characters had to be meticulously constructed with eyes and mouths added to a number body, text was carefully thought out according to each scene and then implemented, the young boy was ‘taken apart’ to be animated, and each scene was painstakingly handcrafted together to form one animation.

     Overall, our bright and vivid colors, simple and cute subjects, and our adventure-like storyline really helped pull of the idea of this film as being one that would appeal to a child. Yet, things kept moving and being introduced throughout the story, so that it would not become too boring. (Even though it was, in essence, just a story that introduced simple numbers one by one.) The inclusion of things for the boy and numbers to interact with along the way and at the party helped keep the story from being too rigid and mechanical. There were hints of his surprise scattered throughout each scene to let young views ‘guess’ at the surprise waiting for Tommy. This is an enjoyable piece that both adults can laugh at and kids can smile and relate to each in their own way.