P. Wang | Desma 24 | Exercise Faux-A-Trope | November 9

Symbolic | So many artists do pieces on love, so me contributing to this huge pile should not hurt. I wanted to work with hands for their simple elegance. Love + hands = heart-shaped hands. The overall metamorphosis is a metaphor on relationships. First the hands shaping a heart: the superficial, happy-go-lucky, friendly, and cute. Next the hands shaped into a heart: after a process of painfully heavy crushing, for love takes work. Finally the return to superficiality: the leaking and oozing heart symbolizes how most relationships are unable to contain our lustful and destructive nature and thereby fall apart to 'just being friends.'

Technical | My animation shies away manipulating line weight and color. Instead, it focuses on the progression of form and plays with negative space. To go with the suggested guidelines, I made the animation have two distinct parts. The lines and color transform together in the first part and separately in the second. A crushing-folding force is present in the first part, while the second has both pressure pulling upwards and gravity pulling down. In terms of the looping, each frame is different and has an equal bit of transformation to the next. The result is a fluidity that matches the oozing red and dripping lines. Frames one and seven are the resting states. The base is a spiraling splatter of red that accompanies the strip in its emphasis of negative space and form.

I modified the flash template provided by Jay to simulate the real zoetrope as best as possible, adding a black background and black dividers to replace the effect of the real slits on the animation. At 20 fps, the animation is much more fluid and uninterrupted on the computer. The real zoetrope darkens the original animation, as the eye blends the black outter surface with what is seen inside the slits.