Creativity

Similar to my stickman series, in 2007, some people used the new media, YouTube, to incorporate modern popular music with classic cartoons. At one point in time, the cartoons were considered products of new media such as the television and various animation devices. Through that once new media, the influence of the Disney dynasty spread around the globe and inspired waves of creativity, most notably in Kanye West who desires to become a contemporary Walt Disney via music and culture. In 2007, amid the massive success of Soulja Boy Tell 'Em's "Crank That," YouTube users married tow worlds to create hilarious videos. Today, nearly ten years later, it's the norm to do mashup videos of popular songs and odd videos. Last year, a series of mashup videos known by the hashtag, BeyonceAlwaysOnBeat, that contained clips of Beyonce's various performances and music videos with several different genres of songs which revealed that Beyonce was always dancing on  beat no matter which song played. This added to the allure of Beyonce and the deserving praise that she receives for her talents. The discovery of this truth about Beyonce's being on beat and providing humor in the merging of "Crank That" and cartoons like Mickey Mouse and Spongebob, are reflections of the creativity expressed through new media.








Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Creativity and New Media

A few years ago, my friends and I took a computer animation class. I signed up because the course posting noted that we would learn how to create live action animations - online! My friends and I have seemingly always loved anime and this class made it seem like I could perhaps create the animated worlds that we held such heavy investments. But I soon learned that storytelling was not exactly my forte. I've always been a numbers guy. Numbers are tangible and accountable for, but in creating a fictional world, I had to create the tangibility present in plausible storylines, character development, and action sequences, as well as I had to be accountable for each second of the piece. So at our beginner level, I created stick figure videos. I used Pivot Animator to make the stick figures, to animate them, I used Hypercam 2 to record a sped up version of my images, similar to a digital flip-book. I uploaded my final products to YouTube to make it accessible to others. The fact that my videos exist on YouTube give me a permanent reminder of one of my first instances of honing my creativity. I appreciate that fact about fostering creativity on social media: there is a sort of timeline that can trigger one's memory and bring them back to that point in time when they first created that stickman animation or a Second Life avatar.

First stickman fight

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah9DOgAv1d8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds2wMHLRN9I