TED-Ed “Accents”
Direction, Design, 2D Animation, Poetry
Animating Denice Frohman’s ode to her mother’s accent
“Accents”, a spoken word piece written and peformed by the talented Denice Frohman, is an ode to her mother’s Puerto Rican accent. I was invited by TED-Ed to turn Denice’s singular poetry performance into animation. We took on the energy, soul and rhythm of Denice’s performance, and translated it into moving image, transposing her rhythmic vocal motifs and allowing her lyrics to propel and lead the imagery using vibrant and raw frame-by-frame animation work.
Check out some of the other amazing animated poems in TED-Ed’s “There’s a Poem For That” series on Facebook.
“I wanted to write my mother out of a shame that didn’t belong to her. I wanted to write her into a power that she possesses. I wanted to subvert the hierarchies of language that puts English at the top, and every other language at the bottom.”
