See, I'm a developer, so the best I can come up with is:
Instatiation
Horrible, isn't it?
Seriously, I think you might want to look at the dictionary definition of "Animation", which mean's "the act of giving life to something previously unalive". Hence referring to rocks as "inanimate" objects. I think it comes from the ancient Greek word for "wind" or "air", which became "breath" in old French, and was then used to signify life (using the noun-form pronunciation). Then it became a verb meaning "to make alive" and gained its common verb-form pronunciation using a long second "a". I'm not sure exactly how or when that part happened, however.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i've started making the actual images for my intro concept (which will somewhat resemble a news-program intro), and can say that the intermission is going to be a hand-drawn twist on a familiar low-motion elevator scene that I think might go nicely with the music I've chosen ("Barefoot in the Park", from the NGE soundtrack). The drawings will be in the same sepia-pencil over antique paper background look that I used for my first attempt at precessing some of my old drawings into background images.
The intro audio will be "Step Forward into Terror" (not that I want to imply anything of the sort with respect to any of the videos in this project
), also from the NGE soundtrack. It sounds a lot like a news into, in my opinion, and is just under two minutes long, giving me just enough time to visually intoduce the project, our two-person narration "cast", and two-screen "studio".I'm definately still doing something with "What a Wonderful World" for the end credits.
BTW: Song, I hope you don't mind as being cast as Yukino Miazawa from Kare Kano, because that's who've I've selected as my female narrator. If you really want it changed, I can probably use someone else (the anchor shots are being done using flat-painted footage, some of which I'm generating, some of which I'm clipping out of screencaps and wallpapers, because setting the video screencaps in a pencil-drawn scene looked pretty stupid when I tried it), but I thought she'd be perfect as a sharp, professional female speaker. That, and I thought you might like the red hair.
I'm going back and forth on whether I'd be better off using Gendo Ikari (partially in tribute to an old Scintilla video) as the male anchor, or Jinnai from El-Hazard, who I've seen used in other videos for the same purpose. Oddly enough, I think Gendo looks less evil
, so I think I'll go with him unless some third possible new-anchor guy comes to mind.
[/size]