My thesis film is about depression and how it makes you feel; Like everything is going both in slow motion and at the speed of light. It's monotonous and you can't drag yourself out of it.
grey
with color?
Nah i like grey
Linework
Trying textures
This project was conceptualized based on my own depression and inability to do basically anything. I hated that most media I saw portrayed the character 'getting better' from depression, when in reality it is genuinely a lifelong 'illness'. I was thrown into a bout of it right as I began work on my thesis- A different, happy idea that I couldn't muster up the energy to work on. I swapped over to something more relatable and a bit less straightforward in production.
I did not storyboard any instance of this work. All of the work I did for this was created based on feeling alone, which is something I've never done before. Not really having a plan and going forward with it on experiences alone was both intense and scary, since I had no clue how it would all come together. I just knew I wanted to show how life was when dealing with depression in a way that was relatable to me. Showing my own experiences and feeling through it.
Personally, I wouldn't go about doing a project in this manner again, however I am quite happy with the result of it.
The fox in the project represents myself. I tend to draw myself as a fox when I do, so whenever a fox appears in my works, more than likely it is an expression of myself. I was hoping to create something for people who are depressed, to show their experiences.
I did not storyboard any instance of this work. All of the work I did for this was created based on feeling alone, which is something I've never done before. Not really having a plan and going forward with it on experiences alone was both intense and scary, since I had no clue how it would all come together. I just knew I wanted to show how life was when dealing with depression in a way that was relatable to me. Showing my own experiences and feeling through it.
Personally, I wouldn't go about doing a project in this manner again, however I am quite happy with the result of it.
The fox in the project represents myself. I tend to draw myself as a fox when I do, so whenever a fox appears in my works, more than likely it is an expression of myself. I was hoping to create something for people who are depressed, to show their experiences.
In terms of style, I needed something that would show the character as being alive, while allowing me to experience she idea of stillness at the same time. Both because when you are depressed, it is hard to move, to live, and to push yourself... and because I was dealing with depression myself at the moment, and thus it was incredibly hard for me to muster up any motivation to work on this project. The 2 frame boil on 2's is what I went with to make something that was easy for me to work on while also bringing a sense of style to the project. I think this choice was perfect for me, because as soon as I managed to kick myself out of that terrible depression, I had family members go through emergencies, and giving myself the grace of not including much movement allowed me to be there for them throughout their times of depression.
I wanted the story to be told using audio as well. Yuri O did the music, and I found many free sound effects on Pixabay. The first minute of animation will be white noise alone, and the music will play incredibly softly in the background after that until the very end, which shows time passing by. The music will pick up then! I am proud with how it has come together.
The audio inspiration skewed towards Toby Fox during his Homestuck era; There are many similar notes and it came together beautifully.
The audio inspiration skewed towards Toby Fox during his Homestuck era; There are many similar notes and it came together beautifully.
The thesis was supposed to be roughly 3 and a half minutes. It is 5 and a half minutes. Just like my undergrad thesis, I vastly misjudged the timing.
The main character is named Fox. That is his name. You can use any pronouns for him, he has no identity. His design came entirely from me thinking to myself 'What is the easiest thing I can draw?"
The main character is named Fox. That is his name. You can use any pronouns for him, he has no identity. His design came entirely from me thinking to myself 'What is the easiest thing I can draw?"
The backgrounds were developed using photos I took of places in my house! Here I have 2 pictures of my room, and two of my downstairs to show the base of the backgrounds.
Lots of Pikachu! Oops. Luckily most won't make it through the filter process
I messed my bed up a bit to make it look more like someone is inside of it. I definitely make my bed on a regular basis (I don't). As you can tell, I am very normal about Pokémon.
My room walls
Very normal about pokemon
My Back Porch (My parent's back proch)
My Couch (My parent's couch) (I paid for none of this)
My gross office ew
Kitchen and Dining room
Dusty car and pokemon crocs in the corner
To get the backgrounds to look the way I wanted them to, I used Illustrator's Image trace tool to vectorize each photo I took. I set it to make the backgrounds have 10 shades of gray, to never go fully white, and to meld similar shades together. I then went over them with my own pen to fix up any issues.
My bed with vague pikachu-like outlines
We love to see a solid floor
my pokemon wall is looking very busy; I didn't end up using this one for obvious reasons
a car radio with the songs edited out
My car
my backyard
my couch
my work desk
kitchen
car
kitchen
i drew lines across a grey bg
likes scribbled v2
I needed to find textures for my character. I wanted him to not look flat; to have more to him than just one color. I found all of these images on Pexels free image site, where the liscence is free to use without credit. I will credit Pexels, though!
I used this for the whites of his eyes and fur
this was used for the bath tub
this was used for his nose, ears, and paws
this was the fox's base fur
this was used for all of the sheets
this was used for the shirt
these are the fox's eyes
this was used for the water
this was used overtop of the phone, and for any glass
other character fur
inner ears
Once I found the textures I wanted to use, I took a deep look at my work and wanted to see if things matched up. Here all some shots without backgrounds, and one very early doodle.
Sad
This file corrupted and I had to recolor it :(
ooo Drugs?
Panic
Ignoring the only people who care about you
Phone
Driving
Lookin'
In bath
Sad baby
Almost every background has this image placed on top of it at 10 percent opacity to help the main character stand out from the background since they're both busy and grey.
Here are a couple of test animations for the project before they were finalized
Finalized animations for the project
The finished work will be shown on my YOUTUBE CHANNEL! Please feel free to go on there and check out what I already have before I release the finished work.
I will not be submitting this to film festivals because there is too much Pikachu and I have no cash at all. If I decide to film fest it, I will go back and paint over all instances of copyrighted media from my room, however I still have no money so it's not in my plans at the moment.
I will not be submitting this to film festivals because there is too much Pikachu and I have no cash at all. If I decide to film fest it, I will go back and paint over all instances of copyrighted media from my room, however I still have no money so it's not in my plans at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCByPD9tHC9rzhwvZxLLhO5g
Also please follow me. I love seeing the number go up. I am AnnaValdezArt on all socials :) :)
THE ACTUAL FULL FINAL (Rough)
VVVVVVV