American Sign Language animations
An animated woman stands in a room. She begins signing in American Sign Language.
What am I? I move my mouth like him. I make no sound like him. What does that make me? All that I am, all that I’ve ever been, brought me here to him.
Beth Lula combined her individualized animation major with her study of the American Sign Language for her final animation project.
She studied the portrayal of ASL in animations and created three of her own.
The first animation (shown above) is based on a scene from the movie “The Shape of Water.”
A red animated dragon sits at a table holding a plate of food. He licks the plate.
He looks at the empty plate, and then asks in American Sign Language, “More food please?”
He gets another plate of food, and then acts very excited. He signs “Thank you!”
He then eats the food.
Lula created the second animation from her own imagination. She drew on video footage of a seagull swallowing a hot dog as reference for the dragon’s swallows, and she had her mother hold a plate and pretend to eat food.
An animated man stands in a room. He begins signing in American Sign Language.
Come to negotiate, eh, have you, you slimy git? Look what I got.
He pulls out a teal jar.
I got a jar, I got a jar. And guess what’s inside it?
He shakes the jar.
The third animation translates audio from a scene in the movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” ASL lecturer Heath Goodall recorded a video of himself signing the scene’s dialogue, and Lula used the video as reference for the animation.