My youngest greatgranddaughter likes art and drawing. She has opted for all online schooling. She can get her school work done in less time and that gives her more time for her own activities. I visited with her the other day just to see what she was up to. She introduced me to Flipaclip, an app that she has put on her phone. So, here was a modern 6th grader working on an animation. I am impressed and interested.
You may have run into many writings asserting that we are living in different times. We can agree with that statement all right. Today is October 29, 2020 and as far as we know, we have never, ever had just this time, this moment, this day before, anywhere. But many statements about new times, digital natives, unprecedented this and never-before-that are attempts to say something more, something along the line of these are times that are so very different, that have a big enough difference from our great grandparents' time that it all amounts to a new world, one where life is different, possibilities are different and dangers and joys are different.
Maybe and maybe not. Young couples in love may actually be quite like young couples in love centuries ago. As always, interest in and assertions of difference depend on what we mean and what we focus on. Working on crops, serving food - there may well be activities that are carried on in the same way as they were years ago.
I have a few friends who have spent years on learning the history of film. Like Anthony DiNozzo in "NCIS", they can remember lines, particular scenes and shots from movies from the 1930's until now. I saw the movie "Hugo"
(a link to a Google search about that Hugo movie and its images that is so long and complex I made the print size "4". Copy it and make it big if you want to check me out). "Hugo" reminded me that film making started in the late 1800's. Animation is a slightly different story. If you had sat with my greatgrandson as we delighted in the repetitive stupidities of Wile E Coyote, https://giphy.com/explore/wile-e-coyote
you would know that animation can show things and do things that only humans can dream up and demonstrate.
I have never animated but some children are doing it these days.
