Food Module: Poor Us - An Animated History of Poverty

This animation is made with the use of 3D and 2D animation techniques that work aesthetically well together with the silhouette characters. The theme of the animation reveals the history of poverty, the facts and revolutions that took place. I really liked the character design for the animation, the use of matte colours and simple shapes worked well with an infographic like style, even though this was not an infographic, I felt that it could easily be translated to one. The information was quite interesting and educational, and the narration worked well, it stated the facts but in a more story manner, making it interesting to younger viewers. However the narrative sometimes lacked too little emotion which I felt didn't work well with some of the animation that was played at the same time. This can be seen with the industrial revolution sequence in which the boy working on the wheel is told that he is fired, the boy is shouted at and jumps in fear. I felt that the narration here could have held more emotion, but the narrative was still monotone.

Inbetween the silhouette animation and narrator, interviews are entwined with the narrative, along with live action and old wood block prints within pages of a book. These interviews go into depth about the era, what action took place and how it stemmed into other eras. I found this quite interesting as I wasn't expecting any live action inbetween the animation, however it works well with the added information that links to the narrator's script. With these live action additions, the interviews, I felt that the young audience I first thought would suit the animation, would possibly find the documentary quite boring due to the added information, therefore the target audience would need to be more mature, high school students studying History and Religious Education.

Poor Us - An animated history of poverty from Fons Schiedon on Vimeo.