My friend Caroline finished her final project for her Animating Science class. This being that final screening of the year, it featured all of the final projects of the three different animation classes.
Among the animation classes was one on animating science. Watching through the final projects, I was struck by how powerful animation could be as a teaching tool. The simple appearance that animation is associated with not only makes it often shoehorned in as a children’s genre, but the simplicity also relays information particularly well. I was also struck by how difficult it is to do well. It is easy to make a complicated subject appear complicated. It is another to make a complicated subject feel easy. I think the best animations may get overlooked because it does such a good job of being excellent that its excellence is never noticed.