Situation so far.

Okay, recap time. 

 

Animation course, second year, 2oo8, green group (I think). 

I'm in a team with Sarah, Dan, Khalid and Matt. 

 

First time around we agreed that we’re all going to generate as many ideas as possible, and then try to see which ones works, which ones doesn’t.  I will leave the others to discuss the ideas that they brought to the table, and will go about dissecting mine.

 

1.       The American Dream.

No, this is not about the fact that America has just chosen its first African American president (a moment that will go down in history, and that’s quite exciting on its own right). This is about the icky, sticky and tacky vision of perfection in American terms, as reflected through countless of movies, cartoons and articles.

 

A very funny version of the American dream is the one where everything is perfect. And by perfect, I mean – No poverty, no crime, and no anger. Also: no diversity, no individuality, and no humanity. The houses all have different, inappropriately loud colours, probably to disguise the fact that the people have all but the same colour of skin. Except for that one lovely darker neighbour.

It’s interesting to see how societies idea of perfection change,  along with their morals and tolerance. Interesting, but unfortunately not what this blog is about.

Some images I’ve found of the American dream idea, to bring to that first group meeting:

 

Did I mention tacky and icky?

This is also why this idea was shot down.

The plus and cons of it, were, in short:

·         Scope-wise, it’s quite convenient – a small enough neighbourhood can be modelled, and still get the idea of what we want across. So it’s not as committing as other ideas, and quite doable.

·         The idea, done well, can be quite funny and quirky an eerie. Amusingly uncomfortable. Everything is just a little too perfect.

·         Not done well, people will fail to get the point. Instead of intentionally tacky, it can just come across as plain tacky. Instead of having a tinge of irony, it would just look annoying.

·         Visually, not that attractive an environment to model – the houses are all the same, the area is too clean – it’s just boring to model.

Pictures and inspiration were taken from Edward Scissorhands, desperate housewives among others.