Most animators are the creators of their own work, that is, they write the story, and they animate the story themselves. They have the idea already in their mind how they want the product to look like, and the creation of the animations is their own interpretation. But, not all animators have this luxury. However, it does not have to be a bad thing that animators create their work based off of someone else’s story. Actually, this could help create a whole new interpretation of the story, and leave viewers with another point of view to the same story. Different perspectives of the same story happen all the time. With animations, having another person create their product can help viewers understand the story through another vantage point, and can even add another layer to the story.
CollegeHumor is a website that is aimed toward college students, and features videos, articles, and posts of various topics. One section of this site has videos, in particular, animations that are created based off of their audience’s true stories. This week, I will be analyzing one story, titled “Dating, It’s Complicated: The Sweaty Road Trip”. In it, the story is of a woman recalling a time in her past relationship where she travels far with her boyfriend in a car ride. The air conditioning to the car seems to stop working, so the heat of the sun, leather seats, and humidity all seem to pile up to her sweating a lot. The more she prevents to sweat, the more she does. To make matters worse, she panics and starts to have the feeling to use the bathroom, which she refuses to use even after her boyfriend pulls over at at rest area. In the end once arrive at their destination, the woman runs out to use the restroom only to have her return to the car with her boyfriend laughing and seeing the sweat literally drip off the seat she was sitting in.
This story was picked up to be featured as an animated video, which could have gone any way. Since the animators were not the originally creators of the story, they had to understand the main points of the story to describe in the video, but also accurately match all of the key parts. The animators also had to figure out if they wanted to have the characters look a certain way, to match the description of the original storytellers, have a new look, or even have the setting look the same or different. The decision to have the video shown was the storyteller’s idea, but the execution of the video was in the hands of the animators at CollegeHumor.
Once seeing the video, I would have to say that not only does the video match the audio of the story, but it also adds on some extra humor. The visuals helps keep the story flowing, and doesn’t let the audience be bored at all. The use of having a constant animation going with the story keeps the audience interested and has them stay focused throughout the story the whole way through. The animations also aren’t extravagant enough to take away from the story, and are simply enough to be understood even without dialogue. The animation also isn’t taking away from the story, as it uses it as a support to start and finish it. Overall, both the visual and audio of the story help create a new interpretation of the woman’s dating story.
capgmu2012 
I think collaboration in animation, or in media in general, is indeed a must. I remember watching something about how Toy Story was created and the dozens of people that had a part in making the animation great. While there can indeed be a vision on how a certain story will pan out, the sub-plots within the major story itself can be as interesting and can normally come from others points of view and individual ideas.
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