Animation Final Project Ideas

The animation presentations that we've done in class have really opened my eyes to all the different animation styles and artists out there. I was particularly influenced by the work of Daniel Greaves. I loved the style of his animation "Manipulation". I think I would like to do some sort of mixed media and mixed technique animation similar to "Manipulation" for my final animation project. I like doing hand drawn stuff, but there's no way I'll be able to get a 30 second hand drawn animation done by the end of the semester, so why not combine techniques to make something a little different. I don't really have any ideas ironed out yet for concept, but there's plenty that I could do. I think I'll mix hand drawn and stop motion techniques like Daniel Greaves does in order to create my final piece. I'll post more on this once I finalize concept ideas.

Global Warming

After reading these articles about global warming and watching An Inconvenient Truth, my feelings towards global climate change, human impact, and solutions to the problem have been greatly influenced. Watching An Inconvenient Truth made me angry about what is going on with our climate and how much impact we have on it. It makes it seem nearly impossible, for me, to make a comedic animation about the situation. There was so much information presented in this documentary and the articles, and I plan on using it to try an help reduce my impact on the environment through carbon emissions. There are so many small things that we can do to help the problem, and with enough people doing them, I think we can greatly reduce our impact on global warming and climate change. We should do everything we possibly can to help keep our environment clean and healthy. With the speed at which changes will occur in our environment unknown, it is important that we start making our own changes in our way of life so that we can increase the time we have. I'm going to start doing more to live greener, and hopefully we can all work together to clean up and protect the only environment we have.

Critical Issues:
1. CO2 levels that are higher than they've ever been in our earth's history
2. melting glaciers
3. increased number and severity of tropical storms due to higher temperatures and warmer waters
4. drought
5. increased energy consumption
6. mass flooding
7. decreasing availability of fossil fuels
8. habitat destruction for animals such as the polar bear
9. increasing gas prices
10. increasing global temperatures

Things We Can Do:
1. buy more energy efficient vehicles like hybrids
2. take public transportation or carpool
3. do less laundry and use warm or cold water instead of hot water
4. use fluorescent lightbulbs
5. recycle more paper to save trees
6. bring your own bags to the grocery instead of using plastic ones
7. reduce paper and energy use by doing more things online instead of through the mail
8. use less heating and air conditioning
9. use ethanol or biodiesel fuels for cars
10. turn off computers when they aren't being used to conserve energy