Place Proposal
For my intent for this project, I aim to have an animation that depicts different homes and transportation throughout generations of my parental family bloodline, the family crest present in each home location and transports shown. It will be in standard widescreen format for digital devices and be presented by being projected onto a blank surface. The work will show visuals from all areas my family has recognized as home for them over our many generations: an English farm, a ship to the New World, a large plot of land in Virginia with a farmhouse, a farmhouse in North Carolina, a farmhouse in Tennessee, a 1920s car, an attic, a home in Michigan Center, Michigan, my home in Jackson, Michigan, and then my current location, Ypsilanti, Michigan. All these locations will be animated with simple up and down movements and left to right movements.
The process of creating this piece starts with looking at my Langford genealogy and finding the records of where my family lived and where. After gaining the necessary information from the ancestral records, I will go in pursuit of finding homes from the region they lived, being careful to match it with the produce and livestock on the farms. With help from my father and also looking at some old photographs, I will also be able to depict the attic my great grandfather and his family lived in and the home my grandfather owned. After this period, I will be able to easily create images of the homes I have lived in. Once all the imagery is done, they will be taken into Adobe Illustrator, turned into a cartoonized style and rigged properly for animation in the next process, which is animating in Adobe After Effects. Once all of this work is complete, I can then think about if sound effects or music will be added along to give more depth to the changing over time before finalizing everything in Sony Vegas.
My intended meaning with this piece is that no matter how long ago it was, a home is your family’s home. I’ve gone to locations my family has been in history, whether it was where my grandfather worked, where my great grandfather moved to in the Great Depression or even the home my father grew up in. Every time I’ve been there, I feel a connection thanks to knowing my family before I was here, knowing there is physical memory of them in the soil, floorboards, on old items, even in the paint on the walls. To me, it’s a place I have been, but as DNA, so there is a moment of feeling an experience even if it is from someone who I never met but am blood-related to. I choose to do animation to show the journey my family took through time as it’s a way to remember where they have been quick. The movement is to signify change as well, saying no location is permanent to a family or person. But overall, this work is to give meaning that these locations are in our blood, of where our family has been. We have indirectly experienced these places at different points of time but now extend into our future lives by adding more locations to ourselves and our family.