Research:
For this assignment I wanted to build off the last project I completed last semester. Last semester I created a little 3D world and green-screened myself in there as kind of an abstract piece. I realized for this assignment the visuals had to be more narrative and create a beginning, middle, and end so I decided to try out 2D animation on top of the little sets I had built. The vibe of the outcome was way different than I wanted and ended up looking like a half-complete version of something that turned into something else. My main artist inspiration for building these little worlds was Molly Soda, and her pieces aren’t exactly narrative in nature, but structure themselves around a more fine art conceptual world. Molly Soda usually makes these little world-building scenes and combines 3D images with 2D overlays later. I’ll attach what I made last semester and some of her work for reference.
Realizing that I had to make a sort of story arc, I remembered this NYT series I found through youtube that made these compelling story animations that were all autobiographical, short, and animated. Next year my senior seminar is in documentary filmmaking, and I wanted to see if I could test out how I could combine world building and possibly add animation. The video I attached below is how I got the voiceover idea:
Planning:
At the beginning of this project I loosely mapped out the story I wanted to tell. When we needed something autobiographical, I wanted to try out telling a kind of story I never told before (a wholesome one about family). When I came across this memory, I basically started to sketch out how I would build all the 3D sets around the story. At this point I was still trying to figure out if I wanted to green screen myself in there like the last project, and other ways I could tell the story. I was also thinking about doing stop motion which I think would’ve looked better, but in the interest of time I just decided to do a 2D animation overlay. In retrospect I shouldn’t have done animation at all-that was the reason I dropped out of the other animation class since I’m taking 21 credits this semester and work part time…I just can’t pull off animations that look complete.
At first I made some sketches and outlined the general story arc…
Experimentation:
So since I wasn’t sure after the set building if I wanted to do something with green screen, 2D animation or stop motion, there was a lot of beginning experimentation with filming material. I landed on 2D animation with the interest of time, since the sets took a long time to build. With last semester’s project I used yarn and found objects for the main portion of the set but this time I needed to use different kinds of materials. I never really make anything that looks “cute” so this was the first time I had to simplify a story visually by making it look more cute than psychedelic or anything else. I initially built 4 sets for the story but the hospital scene ended up looking like Loss. In all, this project was just one big experiment to see how I should treat my thesis project and what I can do with the amount of time I’ll be given. I realized that I don’t want to do a 2D animation for my thesis but I do want to keep pushing my usual illustration style (like the past project) and world building. I’m not super pleased with how this project came out, but I’m trying to live with it by accepting that it truly was an experiment in preparation for next semester. I think it turned out looking kind of cheesy and incomplete but now I know what to visually avoid to make my thesis not as cringey.
Execution:
Here’s the final thing:
