Project Statement

Name: Shanmugapriya Maruthapillai

Title: The Creator’s Play: An artistic interpretation of the influence of Eastern philosophy


PROJECT STATEMENT


In recent years, I have been doing a lot of soul-searching and questioning about the happenings in my life. Whether they are planned or accidental. My mother’s recent death has led me to wonder whether everything in my life has been pre-planned and controlled by a greater force.

For my final project, I will create an animated story about the Creator’s influence on the journey of human life. “The Creators Play” is an artistic interpretation on the journey of life inspired from some tenets of Eastern philosophy. The purpose of this story is to illustrate the philosophy of self-realization or surrendering to the greater force. An Eastern philosophical belief is that an individual can surrender to the greater force and attain a blissful state once he is devoid of all sins in the journey of life.

The story starts with an assumption that the creation has already been made. A ball (planet) starts rolling and a hand that’s controlling the ball is pushing it. Inside the ball, the central characters of the story Shakthi, a young female, and Shiva, a young male are stuck in a whirlpool. The whirlpool takes them into a river. The river represents the journey that Shakthi and Shiva need to take, along with several others stuck in the whirlpool. The hand drops all of them stuck in the whirlpool in to the river with each one getting their own boat to sail.

Every boat contains bags of sins incurred by the sailor. Bags of sins are representations of the results of bad karma. In Eastern philosophy, karma means “action”. All karmas have consequences in controlling life’s destiny. Bags of sins are accumulated at birth by getting some from the previous generation and from the result of bad karma done from birth until the present time.

The characters for this animation are partially inspired from a mixture of Indian art forms like traditional Indian paintings. I want to interpret the classical Indian aesthetic with contemporary animation techniques. Through this fusion I hope to allow people to reflect on their deepest understanding of life.
This project will involve research on the characteristics of Indian art and an understanding of the theories of the Eastern philosophy. Through this project I hope to create an identity and style for myself that will lead me toward my dream of establishing my own animation company.