For my final assessment of VSW100 Art and Creativity with Curtin University, I opted to make a stop motion animation to try something different and challenge myself creatively.
I built my animation narrative around the theme of “The everyday” but with a twist. I explored a day in the life of a veteran suffering from PTSD / trauma – which means their experience of the everyday is not the same as it is for everyone else.
The final video can be viewed here:
• This animation is aimed at viewers who are veterans that might be struggling to understand their behaviours and mental health issues. For veteran service providers as a visual way of reinforcing their resources surrounding understanding the experiences, emotions and relationships of someone suffering PTSD. And also for civilians, friends and families of veterans, who struggle to understand what the veteran is going through or why they are behaving the way they do.
• This narrative was inspired by my painting "Reflection" (see previous blog post). This painting is a study in reflection of operational service juxtaposed against the underlying, hidden emotions of soldiers just getting on with their duties in wartime, not seen on the surface nor understood at the time, and which emerge later on in the quiet of peacetime. I only used red oil paint and its complementary green to create this painting, both hues were mixed with white for a tonal scale. Red is symbolic of the Army, power, anger, violence, danger, blood, poppies, the enemy, and war. Whilst green evokes thoughts of camouflage material, terrain, calmness, peace, vegetation, luck, Islam, hospital walls, and the ADF’s partner force, the Afghan National Army (Green force). Mixing these two hues together results in much of the light spectrum being absorbed and a resulting dark brown colour, almost black, which evokes heavy feelings of depression, death, sadness, decay, depth, and darkness.
• I employed other narrative devices such as dreams, flashbacks, and metaphors (eg: the black dog), using a mix of imagery (deployment photos from Iraq and Afghanistan) and drawings / artwork.
• It is hoped the audience will realise how debilitating it is to live with untreated PTSD, which is the most common mental health disorder after depression. For more information please visit the Open Arms website:
• The animation story boards are below:
The music in the video is: The Things That Keep Us Here by Scott Buckley [Free Copyright-safe Music]