This post will concentrate on how I incorporated Edward Tufte’s five principles into my animation.
In a podcast interview with Sean Carroll, Edward Tufte states that “seeing with your eyes, not seeing with your words” is important, it allows the audience to stay in an optical experience, seeing something for its texture and colour, not its name. This links to the point in my animation in which the stone in Stonehenge becomes cheese.
I did incorporate the Tufte theories as predicted in the previous post. Yet there were additional ways in which Tufte’s five theories were included within my animation.
Use of Colour
Whilst the colours used did represent nature, they didn’t fully imitate reality due to the natural textures and shading not being included. Instead, my animation was less realistic and more like Claymation.
When deciding on the colour for the moon and cheese, I considered using a lighter yellow to closely replicate Swiss cheese, however, to communicate a clear message to the audience a brighter, stronger yellow colour was chosen to use as a label… cheese is yellow. With the moon, a deliberate decision was made to make the colour replicate the true colour of Swiss cheese as this is a closer colour to the moon. This allows for a clearer differentiation of the sun and the moon.
To enliven/decorate, brighter colours have been chosen rather than muted tones to bring life to the design. The target audience for this animation would be children and bright colours would draw their attention.
Narratives of Space and Time
In addition to the previously mentioned example of the sun setting and the moon rising. I demonstrated narrative of space and time by using sound. The song Morning Mood by Edvard Grieg, along with bird sounds was played for the section of the animation that the sun was present. In contrast, when the moon came up, the song faded, and the birds tweeting became owls hooting to demonstrate night fall.
References
Carroll, S. (2023) Edward Tufte on data, design and truth. Sean Carroll’s Mindscape [Podcast]. 23 January. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sean-carrolls-mindscape-science-society-philosophy/id1406534739?i=1000596068778 [Accessed 8 Feb 2025].