Thinking About Dogs depicts a regular guy just trying to go about his day, except for the fact that he is always being confronted by Dogs. For some reason, the dogs are definitely noticing him, and they want him to know it. My project is not about people and dogs relating to one another. In this piece, Dogs is a place that exists in one’s mind; somewhere to go when feeling like there’s nowhere else. It is about alienation, retreating into one’s own head, and trying to get over stuff and move on.

I chose to animate this project because it allowed me to take the most liberty with my characters.There were a lot of things in the piece that I wanted to not imbue with any obvious meaning, regardless of how what I thought meant. Maybe the audience will think, “What are the dogs trying to tell these people? What do they know that we don’t?” The ability to be sort of canvas for one to project themselves onto is something that is unique to animation and I wanted to take that opportunity. This way, I didn’t have to depict the dogs as anything but dogs.

Thinking About Dogs depicts a guy trying to go about his day, except for the fact that he is always confronted by a Dog. For some reason, the dogs want him to know they are definitely noticing him. My project is not about people and dogs relating to one another. In this piece, Dogs is a place that exists in one’s mind; somewhere to go when feeling like there’s nowhere else (want to find something else to put here?)—a happy place. It is about alienation, retreating into one’s own head, and trying to get over stuff and move on.

I chose to animate this project because it allowed me to take the most liberty with my characters.There were a lot of things in the piece that I wanted to not imbue with any obvious meaning, regardless of how what I thought meant. Maybe the audience can think, “Why are the dogs disapproving of the strange looking guy?” Or maybe they think that the dogs were trying to tell him something.he ability to be sort of canvas for one to project themselves onto is something that is sort of unique to animation and I wanted to take that opportunity.This way, I didn’t have to depict the dogs as anything but dogs, I tried not anthropomorphize them at all, and the audience could do the rest and see them as whatever they wanted.

Thinking About Dogs depicts a guy in a couple of empty, lonely situations, except for the fact that he is always confronting a Dog. At one point, the confrontation leads to a disruption in the guy’s mind. Then, everything is calm for the guy. But, I guess there’s another guy, and he also has some relationship to Dogs capital D, and you get to thinking that maybe the thinking about Dogs is pretty common. My project is not about people and dogs relating to one another. In this piece, Dogs is a place that exists in one’s mind; somewhere to go when feeling like there’s nowhere else—a happy place. It is about alienation, retreating into one’s own head, and trying to get over stuff and move on.

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The medium allowed me to take lots of liberties with my characters. I didn’t want anyone, neither the dogs nor the people, to be depicted as happy. At the same time, I didn’t want the characters to be depicted as sad or angry, because those are strong emotions that are heavily coded. If I used them in my piece, the emotions of the characters would detract from the situations the characters were depicted in. Instead I thought that they should appear deadpan, and that their lack of expression would serve as a blank slate for the audience to project onto, ál a Kuleshov effect. This way, I didn’t have to depict the dogs as anything but dogs, I tried not anthropomorphize them at all, and the audience could do the rest and see them as whatever they wanted.

or

There were a lot of things in the piece that I wanted to not imbue with any obvious meaning, regardless of how what I thought meant. Maybe the audience can think, “Why are the dogs disapproving of the strange looking guy?” Or maybe they think that the dogs were trying to tell him something, or that the guy was depressed (these are all things I’ve heard in feedback.) These are the kinds of things I personally have my own opinion of but choose to keep private. This is not because I did not think it meant anything to the work, but I thought it would mean more for the audience to take it as whatever they feel. The ability to be sort of canvas for one to project themselves onto is something that is sort of unique to animation and I wanted to take that opportunity.

Thinking About Dogs depicts a guy in a couple of empty, lonely situations, except for the fact that he is always confronting a dog. At one point, the confrontation leads to a disruption in the guy’s mind. Then, everything is calm for the guy. But, I guess there’s another guy, and he also has some relationship to Dogs capital D, and you get to thinking that maybe the thinking about dogs is pretty common. This project is not about people and dogs relating to one another. In this piece, Dogs is a place that exists in one’s mind; somewhere to go when feeling like there’s nowhere else—a happy place. It is about alienation, feeling detached from the outside environment and retreating into one’s own head.

My project is becoming more personal, and I think it’s time to talk about the relationship that I have with dogs and how I can best represent this. More importantly, I need to think about why it is important for me to put it… out there, for people to see. So, it’s time to answer some of my own questions. I think it’s less about the relationship I have with dogs but the relationship i have to thinking about dogs. I like to think about dogs. More than I like thinking about them, it seems more accurate to describe it as a compulsion. I’n not thinking about Dogs, Dogs is a place that I go when I need to distract myself. It is like my brain’s alternate path to anxiety. It must be some sort of subconscious interruption, but it feels like a cool thing my brain is doing for me. Why though? I don’t know when it started happening. There’s a sort of wall that comes up when I try to think to hard about it– shortly after conceiving this project my childhood dog Ruby passed away, and now it makes me sort sad to think about my personal relationship with dogs because she was the only dog I’ve had and the only one I’ve ever had an intimate relationship with. I’m going to include her in my project, I don’t think that statements warrants more explanation than I’ve already given. I will say that I miss her, and I think it has affected my project more than I thought it. As for the question of why it is important for people to see this? I think that all I can say is I’m hoping it will strike a chord with people who have social anxiety, and I guess I want to document this sort of unique/ maybe not that uncommon defense mechanism.

I’m trying to be as cryptic as I can when speaking about my piece to my peers. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that a lot of my project is meant to be entertaining, or it only has meaning to me. I feel like this is a moot point because I’ve said it to the class in critique and seminar, so I may as well move on. It will be interpreted as it will! What’s been more interesting to me lately is the actual process of animating. Seeing something in your head and then seeing it move on paper is a very strange and satisfying experience.  I’ve been struggling with animating walking. One night I sat and tried to figure it out for 3 hours with out making any real progress in my film. It felt like I was drawing the same picture over and over and over again– very frustrating. Here’s to trying again. My final sequence of events is below.

Final shot list:

1. Doggie on the beach
2. Title screen!
3. Walkin’ down the street
4. Talking to the cashier (?)
5. Rear ended by the wolf-dog
6. Waking up no dogs
7. Upstairs there is a dad/mom another person working on computer
8. Look up at the big guy in the sky
9. Dedicated to Ruby Parisi

Things to think about:

• are cashier’s too tropey?
• What do I call this piece?

It is week 5 and I have about 7 seconds of animation completed. I’ve realized a lot of this process is driven by the desire to see an action completed. It’s not that bad but I’m still worried that I wont be able to finish in time for critique. As my research continues, I’ve realized a major flaw in my research question: How is realism used in animation? The answer is apparently, “it’s not.” Right now I’m working on reshaping my question. Animation is medium that depicts a reality very subjectively, because the creator completely imagines the animated world—this makes me think that I should research this phenomenon. The opposite of realism is more along the lines of what I was thinking about initially, but I didn’t/ still do not have the words for it. The fact that there is nothing to evaluate “the real” in animation against complicates the basis on which to evaluate how “real” anything in animation is.

I’m still thinking about what situations to depict in my short. I really don’t want to over complicate things but I also don’t want to allude to a story line when there isn’t one. In some ways I think that could be ok, but it needs to be done in a certain way which isn’t completely unsatisfying for the viewer. It’s something I need to think about but I can’t spend too much time thinking about it. Catch 22!

Iterative Artist’s Statement-Week 4

At this stage in my project, I would say this piece is about alienation, exclusion vs. inclusion, and the invisible forces that might affect the understanding of one’s place these social spaces. It will be a two minute long, non-narrative piece.

I have only recently arrived to the point where I can concisely summarize what my project is about, and I’m hoping it won’t stray too far from what I have now as I continue working on it. Animation gives the creator more artistic liberties than almost any other medium of filmmaking, except for the fact that it is extremely time consuming and labor intensive, so in this case, time is really the only thing working against you. Ultimately, it came down to a realistic assessment of my abilities and what I would be able to accomplish in the next few weeks. There were a lot of different themes I was working on tackling; I wanted to explore expressions of power and domestic life, but eventually ended up needing to do something more stream- lined. Because the themes I have now decided to work with don’t rely on depicting multiple characters having confrontations, it’s far simpler on paper. And it will still feature lots of dogs.

As a sort of state of the union I am: Finishing story boarding and will be doing intense animating for the next few weeks!

Something that I’m working through right now as I work on this is the fact that it’s personal—it isn’t about me, but on an more interactive level, alienation is sort of a personal subject and I can only speak to my own experiences. Other than that, my project isn’t grounded in a historical framework and it isn’t a call to action—its not really about anything other than these subjective experiences. So I’m wondering if it will be critically engaging in any way/ figuring out how to make it more critically engaging/ wondering if it matters that it is.

So far, my most influential research has been from Donna Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto, mainly because its focus on dogs is aptly in line with my project. Before opening her book, my ideas for the animation were mainly about humans and their relationships, using dogs only as a metaphor for this. Now I think that I will go in the direction of making the significance of the dogs more ambiguous. While looking into other animations that inspired me, I realized that what many of them had in common was a simple story line. This inspired me to reform my project, and rather than explore many different instances of conflict, try and focus on two or three (at the most) simple story lines. I am still thinking about what those story lines should be.

Because my project it is starting to become more and more personal, my research has been following the trajectory of questions and inquiries I have had on a personal level, rather than the scientific approach that I thought I would take when I was formulating my question. I’ve been thinking a lot about the representation of emotion of both humans and animals, which also brings me to anthropomorph-ization and why that is such a common practice in animation The representation of emotion is a big part of what makes animation such a relatable medium/genre. Still, less detail and specific human like-ness allows for more projection, and projection seems to be a key component of “realness.” My research has took a turn and it is currently focused on exploring the sweet-spot meld of these two phenomena.

What is making this process uniquely mine is that I’m stuck on any notion of what the final project might be, especially because I’ve never used this medium and my skills is like an uncontrolled variable. Some call that a “lacking adequate planning”, but I prefer “uniquely mine.”