Julia Griffey, MFA ’05
project
Name: Julia Griffey
Graduation: 2005
Program: MFA
The short, animated film, Animal Studies 1.0, evolved from a
rotoscoping exercise. Rotoscoping is a process of creating animation by drawing frame-by-frame from film or video. It is done either for educational purpose (as in my case) or when the animator wants a character to move in a realistic way. I drew frame-by-frame from video I captured at the zoo, which resulted in about 400 drawings of zebras, gorillas, giraffes, birds, peacocks, and ostriches. I shot all of these drawings, reversed the colors (in PhotoShop) to make the images white lines on a black background, and then edited the movement sequences together to music to make a short piece.
While I am now pleased with the final piece, in the process of drawing, I questioned whether the images I was making were even going to be usable. I had been trying to draw quickly, so some of the sketches looked so crude they hardly resembled animals. When I shot the drawings and made them into short movies, I was amazed at how realistic the movement appeared. This project demonstrated that, when animating, it is not the quality of the individual drawing that matters, it is the sum of the images as a whole.