I think there is still a strong place for hand drawn, American animation, because our story is worth telling. As an Appalachian first and foremost I know and understand the struggles and the downtrodden and forgotten in our country. That is much the point of the story I am telling in Coal Republic. Animation today is too refined. Everything is too refined. Real stories have grit. The stories of the people at the bottom of society are dirty. They don't have smooth edges and bit-mapping that is on-fleek. It is 2018. Everything is doable with minimal equipment. An iPhone has much more processing and rendering power than all of the equipment I used when I first started combined. Hand drawn line and the imperfections that go with that are a dying art form in the American landscape, but I feel the story they have to tell is drastically different than anything else on a strictly digital landscape. There is nothing that can match pencil-to-paper for what it does. There is nothing wrong with digital animation, but unfortunately much of it lacks heart. I certainly support hand done things, and my animation is no different. Coal Republic is a broken film about broken people and broken things, trying to make things work in a broken place. The people in it live low to to ground. They live in the dirt. They work their hands hard and torn to make it, but try as they might their efforts are futile. Like the characters, I am telling this story with my own toil, and from my own hands. This sort of animation will drain your life away and invigorate you at the same time. There is certainly a duality to it.
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Jacob FertigArtist, Educator, Activist, Micronationalist, et al. Archives
November 2019
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