Senior Thesis plan

Shengyu Liu(Bryan)

Journals

4 proposals for my thesis:

Globalization, cultural differences, internationality, environmental issue

Traditional Chinese story

Vapor wave, cyberpunk

Who am I, a journey of the soul

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My first proposal is around the topic of globalization.

As this is the third year I stayed in nyc, I had experienced plenty of cultural differences by conversing with people from different cultural background. I found that people like to discuss cultural differences, which include beliefs, perspectives, languages and so on.

Other than cultural interest, globalization also creates problems like pollution, climate change, terrorism and so on. Apparently, as we are all living in this globalized world,
we are all bonded together with each other’s’ fate.

My plan for this globalization topic is to make a informative animation to show different cultural perspectives and explain the pros and cons of globalization and how does them affect our life.

Pros and cons: this proposal has a great research potential. This proposal takes a lot of efforts and time. This proposal maybe less fun than the other too since it needs to be objective and informative.

The second proposal is something Chinese, most likely a story based in old tales.

This is some sort of a safe plan. I’m from China and Chinese culture is what I find myself the most familiar of. There was a time I took inspirations from old Chinese poetries, and I am certainly able to do the same thing again.

For this proposal I need to come up with a story and setting ASAP, it is relatively easy to do because I’m Chinese and so have the background to come up with a very standard production.

Pros and cons: easy to compose. It’s a field that I’m familiar with. However, it’s less comprehensible for non-Chinese audience, and I want to be a “Chinese animator” less than an “animator.”

The third proposal is a simple and superficial one: Vaporwave

Vaporwave is a genre of art I fancy. It features glitch art, renaissance of the 90s, vintage computer art and old Japanese disco.

Pros and cons: it’s an art movement I fancy, funny, playful… but I think I’m already giving up on this, maybe I’ll incorporate Vaporwave in another proposal because I think it is too powerless on its own. But I wrote it down anyway.

The fourth proposal is about the big questions, which is the topic I have been fascinated by for 3 years but have never came up with the good enough production.

I regard myself as a sensitive person, and my life as a journey, a trip, of which the goal or destination is always changing and the direction is always confusing. There were many times that I fell into a miserable state and got up, many times that I lost all my hope and found new light, many times that I see others suffer from the same overwhelming conflicts between reality and dreams. Many times it seems that we are eternally cursed to be the prisoner of our own minds.

The proposal explores the psychological and philosophical aspects of life as a conscious being. It might take the form of a fictional story, or just simply a stream-of-consciousness style film. The film will combine footages shot by camera and animations made in computer to create a sense of juxtaposition between the real and the imagined.

This idea is what I truly wanna do. Actually in my opinion it has a more significant artistic value compare to the previous 3. But, it is also the most difficult one to achieve because of the same reason. I need to do a lot of research, a lot of editing, and a lot of thinking. Plus, thinking a lot could be really harmful for my mental health, which is an important factor for me to complete my work.

Pros and cons: my true passion. However, hard to realize such a broad/abstract idea.

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Selected topic: Proposal 1+4

A sample sketch (3-5min)

Build a world-setup

Ideas:

Dark Forest

Communications

Anxiety

Separation, Individuality&fear of the unknown

Alienation(from oneself and from others)

Paradoxical

Contradictory

Your life is not up to yourself

Balance

Change

Jealousy

Desire

Expectations

Solitude

A journey to the strange place

A group of people never really meet each other

Split screen

Barrier

Fence

Stage 1

sketches of ideas, the main point was to create juxtaposition of two incomplete images that would be complete if merged together, or two individuals envying each other. It’s less confusing to just look at the sketches.

Stage 2

Further developed ideas & refined subject

I got into this really digital representation of things, which I find quite workable because digital representation gives me a minimum feeling that has the potential for me to really make my message clear. The idea developed from random juxtapositions to a story based dual character narration. The incompleteness & envying each other theme is preserved, and represented by the choice of color, the shapes and placing, and the environment.

Stage 3

visual decisions and storyboarding, script writing, plot planing.

The story further developed to have a more complete start-to-end outline. 5 chapters are planed, representing different age starting from 15, adding 2 by each chapter, to 23. Different styles are planed and every chapter are expected to look different. The juxtaposition is still there, but I reduced the envying part, because I decided to merge the two characters into one person in the end.

Stage 4

work my a** off

Well… I’m kinda running out of time so this stage is mostly working on the actual footage, adding details & motion, recording the narration, and completing storyboard, everything the same time… so far (2018 Oct 23) I’ve been working mainly on the actual footage so there’re not really a lot of new stuff to show. They look just like the images up there in stage 3 with minor details and some motion, with some minor changes… uh, I’ll just put them up anyway.

Bryan Liu

Senior Thesis Journal