Grocery bags, shopping bags, plastic bottles, milk cartons, containers, bullet proof vests and even joint prosthesis. These are just some of the uses of the world's most popular plastic called polyethylene. Produced in quantities exceeding 80 million tons annually, this plastic is nearly impossible not to interact with dozens of times on a daily basis.
I have always wanted to create an animation dedicated to chemistry, a field of study I know very little about but find so interesting. After searching through a few of the world's most popular molecular molecules and chemical compounds I thought one which people most commonly interact with and are dependent upon would be most interesting to animate.
All animating was done in After Effects once I made all the illustrations in Illustrator by referencing various sources. I then composed the music in Cubase using some of my favorite synth patches. Listen to the music I made here: soundcloud.com/cyticre/polyethylene
I learned a lot about plastics during the process and how amazingly diverse this chemical compound truly is. No matter where you live in the world, its quite hard to imagine spending a day on earth without touching a few dozen different items that contain one of the many grades of polyethylene.
On the other end of the spectrum of such a diverse, problem solving, and life changing invention, may be the more obvious lack of attention attributed to properly disposing and recycling of this great invention. It became quite clear to me while doing the research for this project that the dangers plastic has already instilled on the planet are quite neglected in the overall eyes of the general public globally.
I hope by creating this video I am able to not only pay tribute to the dedicated men and women in the sciences and their inventions which often go unnoticed or nameless that have improved life for all, but also to serve as a reminder that without proper disposal and consideration for the only home all humans share, our inventions can easily become destructive.
