J. Henry a Visual Symphony

For those not familiar with the tall tale “John Henry” It is the classic story of man VS. machine. If you would like to read the classic story, you can check one version of this tale at this link.

http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/wv2.html

Our class was titled Visual Symphony. The purpose of the class was to create an animation that could be performed live, something similar to a Video Jockey performing with a live group of musicians.  J. Henry was performed at the Creative Alliance during LightStruck, spring 2009. We performed with the percussion group “Straight Up Tribal”.

At the start of this project, our class decided to split into 3 groups to make a single 10-15 minute piece with 3 movements to tell a new interpretation of this tale of the human spirit. 

We wanted the piece as a whole to have a running theme of silhouettes. Shadow puppetry has a very unique quality in that it can be both representational, but abstract. It is representational because you can easily distinguish what the object or creature is simply by its silhouette. It is abstract because you are never given any details of color or texture of the character. This allows for the mind to follow the basic story, while allowing the individual the opportunity to fill in the details with their own imagination. Overall this permits our finished piece to have a wider audience to appeal too.

Each group had a very different look to their animations. There is information on group 1 in the new paragraph. Group 2 created a 2d character animation to tell a modern day version of the “John Henry” story, now in a business environment. Group 3 used a combination of 3D and rotoscoping to show a foreboding future of working without man after the machines have taken over.

I became the leader of group 1. My group was responsible for creating an animation depicting the beginnings of working man, or man working before machines. We decided to use after effects to attempt to create a modern shadow puppetry look.

The animated clips in this video are animations I put together for group 1. This is not the entire piece, and the drums in this video are not “Straight Up Tribal”. I created the music in this video in soundtrack pro to try and give the viewer an idea of what our piece was like.