Animation Students At School of Visual Arts Reveal Their Upcoming Thesis Projects
The School of Visual Arts in New York City is offering a peek at some of its outstanding in-progress thesis projects from the school’s various animation-driven departments.
SVA’s innovative and practical graduate, undergraduate, and continuing education programs teach both traditional craft and the latest technology skills necessary for students to meet the needs of the industry. Read on to learn more about these amazing projects from the following departments:
BFA Animation
Learn traditional and digital 2d techniques in this drawing-intensive BFA program with an emphasis on storytelling.
BFA Animation thesis students Sunnie Moon and Vincy Guan decided on a collaborative film over curry dinner a year ago, to allow each other to focus on their strengths and make a visually appealing film. From then, they have been finalizing the story over a curry dinners as well!
In the Forest, We Grew is a story about two red pandas who set off to build their dream house together in a bamboo forest, only to find their differences are putting their relationship under strain.
The look of the film is inspired by vintage matchbox designs. “We found the shapes, texture, and limited color palettes in these designs to be very appealing and looked to expand on these potentials through our film.”
BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation, and Visual Effects
Master the creative, technical, and narrative skills necessary to work in the 3d animation and visual effects industry.
BFA Computer Art students Chrisy Baek, Daniela Dwek, and Maya Mendonca are teaming up on their thesis project, Hamsa.
In their own words, “Hamsa treats the Israeli-Palestinain conflict through the lens of a Jewish Israeli girl. This is a message of love which aims to teach that humanity conquers all prejudices; at the end of the day, we are all the same.”
The team wanted to ensure that they remained true to their message and that their creative vision would not be compromised. This took time, research, and many iterations to ensure that the significance of the story was authentic and without bias. The creators chose the medium of 3d animation in order to reach a broader audience by using lighter visuals to address a serious topic.
Follow Hamsa’s progress on their Instagram page.
MFA Computer Arts
A nationally ranked graduate program emphasizing creative experimentation and a multidisciplinary approach to making art and telling stories with computers.
Under the Dark Clouds is a thesis project by MFA Computer Arts student Kangmin Lim that combines many different mediums to tell a moving story about self-acceptance in a magical dream world.
Kangmin Lim is a mixed media artist who explores the idea of the visualization of a psychological home through dreaming. As an animator with a fine arts background, she tends to mix traditional and digital mediums to create imaginary words that reflect her consciousness and mental health issues.
In Lim’s own words, Under the Dark Clouds is “a 2d mixed-media fantasy animation about my own visit to an unconscious dream world. This film deals with the idea of self-acceptance, and how dreams reflect our unconsciousness. It uses digitally hand-drawn character animation, combined with watercolor stop motion and crayon drawings on a background. This idea is based on my own experience, but I want a lot of people to relate to this film and hopefully feel better after watching it.”
Check out Kangmin Lim’s work on her Instagram page.
Learn more about studying at SVA’s MFA Computer Arts, BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation, and Visual Effects, and BFA Animation at SVA.
