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Frankenstein
The Themes Are Alive!

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The Prompt, The Plan

     This project is based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. After reading the chapters, our goal was to find two themes from the novel and bring them to life.

  •      "Guilt can motivate someone to do the right thing because they strive to avoid the suffering caused by the consequences of their actions when they do wrong."

  •       "Creating life is a power that belongs to God alone because when humans attempt this, they can only create destruction."

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     In the guilt statement, playing God is what Victor did wrong, creating a destructive creature is the consequence, and his family and friends being murdered is his suffering. I think they fit together quite well. My plan for this project was to create a visual of a scene, but I had so many ideas I wanted to show, so I decided the best format was a short film.​ Here was my plan:

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     Victor’s in his laboratory, surrounded by flickering candles, awaiting the moment. Lightning strikes as Victor’s creation shows the first signs of ‘life.’ A candle blows out. The creature rises, but his skin falls to ash, and he resembles a skeleton. He points at Victor and William, Henry, Elizabeth, and his father surround the table the creature is lying on. The Creature covers more candles to blow out the flames, and Victor’s family clutches their necks and fall over in agony. Victor’s afraid and tries to cover his eyes, but finds his hands bloody, with their blood. Then all the candles blow out. Victor opens his eyes and finds himself before the table bearing a lifeless creature, and he knows what he must do. He takes a candle and burns the body.
     I would draw this mostly with pen and likely keep it black and white, except for maybe the candle’s flame, the monster’s eyes, and the blood on Victor’s hands. Keep it dark and romantic. I don’t think sound is necessary, and I want to keep the short animation around a minute or less.

     "When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands... I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation." - Chapter 4. 

     "But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." -Chapter 5

     As he gained more knowledge about life, Victor felt powerful. Cocky enough to play God. Once finished, Victor feels regretful of his creation, calling it a monster.

     "Caused the deaths of two members of his family, Victor is consumed with guilt." - Chapter 8

     Victor feels responsible for the deaths caused by the monster he created. In the future, this guilt prevents him from creating life ever again.

     "And did I not, as his maker owe him all the portions of happiness that was in my power to bestow?" -Chapter 17     

     Not only does Victor feel responsible and guilty for the deaths caused by the creature, but also responsible for the creature's happiness. He created life and neglected it, failing to be the God he pretended to play as.

     "Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?" - Chapter 20

     When the creature confronts Victor and asks for a mate, Victor chooses never to create life again. It is his guilt of playing God and creating destruction and bringing the downfall of his family members that pushes him to make the right choice.

Reviews. Score 4.0

What, specifically, stands out to you about this project? Why does this stand out to you?
     "Detail."
     "The attention to detail and clean transitions."
     "The quality of the stop motion animation and drawings. I haven't seen lots of things in STEAM that are this high quality and also stop motion."
     "It's very well done and skillful, the art is good."
     "The artwork is very cool and I like the way that the style of video."
     "The craftsmanship and fire!"
     "All of the drawings. I can see significant effort and hard work."

Reflection

     This project was very fun, especially since the entire class based our projects on the same story. I enjoyed figuring out ways to bring the themes to life, even though I struggled with writing a sad story for the short film. It took a lot of work to draw this out, and my hand was in pain, but I'm proud of going through with this while knowing it would be hard. 

     My biggest success is probably that I finished the film. It's not exactly as I planned, but everything that needed to be there is there. Most of the work days I spent massaging and stretching my hand just to prepare for the next frame. I'm proud of showing the story and not telling it, because it would be so much easier to add captions for what's happening.

     If I had more time, I would add more frames and spend more time on the details. I think the story of the short film is fine, but I know it would run smoother with more frames per second. To save time, the frames that I knew wouldn't be a focus, like one of the in-betweens of an arm moving or something, I put less detail and effort into. That shows up in the final film and I know I can do better, especially with the help of my lightboard. And most importantly, if I had more time, I would've spelt Shelley correctly at the end of the film.

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