Evolve

Senior Thesis

Concept

Design

Animation

CHALLENGE

This is my motion design senior thesis that shows a clear and sophisticated sequence of events that are engaging to watch or to “Evoke” an emotion from our audience.

For my Senior thesis, Evolve is an animated film about showcasing the highs and lows of one’s life in reflection, and trying to cope with it by staying strong and positive.

Concept

My thesis is a personal story, expressing the transformative inner feelings that not many people see. Then the transformation is based on failures and successes. While creating this piece took inspiration from the quote by Ernest Hemingway from his novel, A Farewell To Arms. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”, while reflecting on experiences in my life, highs and lows, and how moments transform you into who we are.

The quote speaks to the universal nature of challenge and adversity; everyone faces moments that test them. It is often through these very challenges that deeper strength, insight, and resilience are forged. This reflects many people, and significantly more my generation.

Additionally, I wanted to represent auditory processing disorder visually, something I struggled with and has affected my communication with people and being social as a whole. The only escape from it was in my art and animation and I used it as a way to express my feelings and to commute.

The idea of someone being in pieces and trying to pull themselves together, showing the impacts of all thoughts and feelings, internally and externally. The pure essence of being a feeling and thinking human is what intrigued me into telling and exploring this in my thesis.

Idea: A person trying to believe in themselves, but is stuck with self doubt due to reflection. (the mistakes, bad moments mixed with good thoughts) Seeing through someone's reflection, inner feelings of oneself as a complicated person. Being in pieces and trying to hold themselves together.

Emotion Theme: tense + impactful/sadness x happy = meaningful.

Emotion Moral: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” - Ernest Hemingway

Senario: person + mirror = torn apart from certain moments: happiness, positivity, mistakes, failure, and issues in their life aside from goodness (judgement, fear and self-doubts), while maintaining their good side.

Pre-production

EXPERIMENTAL ALTERNATIVE ANIMATIONS

The objective of experimental is to create a few potential design style options for Evoke.

ANIMATION EXPERIMENT 01

The first experimental animation I chose to do cel animation with an organic watercolor/hand made approach experimenting with color and scale. Created in Adobe Photoshop.

ANIMATION EXPERIMENT 02

Second is another cel animation but experimenting with vibrant colors and abstract art in a hand painted medium. Also created in Adobe Photoshop.

ANIMATION EXPERIMENT 03

My final experiment is a collage style of 2D and 3D designs, inspired by the works of Tom McCarten. This design style was very successful as it supported the story for my thesis in terms of color, it encourage me to go fully abstract in the visuals. Created with Cinema 4D and animated in Adobe After Effects.

Pre-production was a difficult process for this project, it requires not only designed to be understood by an audience but it encourages to visually show something familiar but different at the same time. Throughout the storyboard and animatic phases of development the early failed passes were to obvious, difficult, literal, and overall unclear.

It hit me that everything shown has to come together and had to visually think more outside of the box than I’ve ever done before.

Animatic

After going through visual storyboard changes, I’ve created an storyboard animatic of my thesis that became the structural blueprint for both pacing, timing, and for animating portions in 2D and 3D.

With visual abstract inspirations from the works of Tom McCarten and Henri Matisse known for his cut outs.