Artist Statement - Final Project

My final project, entitled "Whiteboard Bear" was inspired by the stop motion animations I have always enjoyed watching on youtube. In all of the classes I have taken in college, I have always found that cartoons and animation are my favorite and I always have the most fun making these types of projects. When I began this project I ran into many struggles. At first I tried to do the drawing and the filming on my own but soon discovered this was nearly impossible. My little point and shoot camera kept turning off and losing the spot I had zoomed in on on the white board. Once my friend started helping me take the pictures I began to have a lot of fun with it. Originally, I wanted the movie to revolve around improvisational doodles, so once I was finished I had about 400 photos with fishtanks, flowers, snowmen, and other random designs. When I put the pictures on my computer I realized these themes had nothing to do with each other and I liked the drawings with the bear best. This bear has popped up in a lot of my work and I would like to think of him as my signature character, so i felt that this was most appropriate. The editing was enjoyable and frustrating at times, and took much longer than I expected, as editing always does. I had to teach myself how to use imovie, because I chose to do the editing at home rather than at school. It took me about two hours to figure out how to turn the "ken burns" effect off (when the photos automatically zoom in and out once they are presented on the screen) and this almost made me give up on the entire project. But, alas, I figured it out and I am pretty happy with the final project. Although it is short I now know how much time and effort goes into even the most simple hand drawn animations and my appreciation for this medium has grown. I really liked this project and hope to do something like this again soon.