The Hub: Eustace Ng and Anita Yen’s “APE”

This semester’s amazing Hub piece comes from two of FHASS professor Jaime Ginter’s former students, Eustace Ng and Anita Yen, who made a brief stop-motion film inspired by one of Jaime’s courses.

From Eustace and Anita:

We took a breadth elective in Physical Anthropology with Prof. Jaime Ginter and worked with her as research students throughout the last school year. It was she who notified us of an “Evolution Video Contest” and we thought it was the perfect chance to combine the two things we love — stop-motion animation and anthropology — and make a short film.

In the film, we wanted to show a theory of how change occurred as early hominins evolved into modern humans. That is, how the lower body changed first to allow bipedal locomotion, to having a diet that allowed our brains to develop into its current capacity. It was challenging to fit all the information into a simple story. So we learned that we had to simplify many aspects of the film especially with the limitations of our medium.

Overall, it was a great experience making this film. Prof. Ginter acted as our science advisor, and provided us with a lot of research and information. We really learned a lot from her. In fact, if we could make it again, we would aim to do her more justice by making our puppets and models more scientifically accurate. In the Animation Department, Prof. Chris Walsh and Aldines Zapparoli also gave us a lot of support. They helped provide space and equipment for this project and gave us a lot of insight on stop-motion animation production and the filmmaking process.

See more of Eustace’s and Anita’s art by clicking on their names!