Author(s): Brooklyn Dortch
Mentor(s): Jerry Peterson
Institution UVU
It is an interactive essay about the problems of the animation industry, and how the studios treat some of the main different careers under the general genre of Animation - general (2D) animator, 3D animator, storyboard artists, color designing, and script writing. It also explores how the genre of animation is treated by the general populace as well as stereotypes, and how the lack of unions covering animated media causes problems for those in the industry and even can put them in danger - whether that be from coworkers, or through being severely overworked. While it mostly addresses the situation in the United States, it does touch on the infamous treatment of animators in the anime industry in Japan. Japan is especially bad due to the anime industry’s popularity causing there to be a large amount of college-aged students graduating with a degree in animation, thus resulting in there being more animators than animation jobs and animators have become expendable. The entire essay is written in second-person perspective - specifically similar to a choose your own adventure novel, and thus would be presented with audience interaction in mind, in a round-about format in order to still address parts that may have been missed with audience choices. It would be preferred if the essay could be on some sort of screen so the pages could be jumped between and there could be visuals - such as relevant memes or images of the sweatshop animation environments in Japan - included, which would help with audience immersion. I am unsure if this counts as oral or creative demonstration, but I figured oral would be best given the options on this form, apologies if I should have put ‘creative presentations’ for this.