Spring Thesis Update

I have changed my thesis plan for the second and final time. I really do wish that I had the time to really get to work on thesis sooner, so I would have realized sooner that it was too much. As much as I loved my plans for ASL with Alice and Gracie, they were simply too big for me to create in this timespan and with the tools I have available. I am now moving forward with another short animation based on a character I made last semester, Blot (which will also be the title).

So first I’d like to explain Blot. This character was created as part of an inkblot character exercise, where you just try to make a character out of an inkblot. I ended up really liking this very simple little character, and imagined a world in which Blot would exist. He is made of black ink and exists in a world of black ink, where he can use his fountain pen to draw more things into existence with black ink. There is no color, until a red blot shows up (we’ll call him Rouge for now). Rouge has the same abilities as Blot, only with red ink. This is disliked in a world of only black, and Rouge is also terribly clumsy and accidentally makes dangerous things with his red ink – say he’s trying to make a flower and ends up making a big fire, or a kitten and ends up making a vicious lion. Blot sees Rouge as his nemesis and only sees the evil creations, not the good intentions. He tried to chase Rouge down and end this, but later comes to realize Rouge’s intentions are not to cause damage. In the end a compromise is reached, and Blot learns to see the beauty in Rouge’s unique abilities. Red ink is then used to create good things that are red, like red roses, ladybugs, and cardinals.

I think I’m going to end up making this with sort of a combination of 2D and 3D, similar in some ways to how Into the Spider Verse was created. I think it make be easier to create blot and potentially some of his environments in 3D for the sake of more dynamic camera animations, but I want to stick to a bit of a comic-book style (again like Spider Verse) and have some hand drawn frames and other elements. I will be collaborating with my boyfriend, Daniel, on the music. I intend to get the music earlier on so I can animate to it; I will have him use my midi keyboard so I can more easily add, delete, or re-arrange as needed.

Overall, I think this change in path is the right choice as there is a ton of flexibility here – the fact that it’s not set in reality in any way and there’s only two characters (which are also very simple forms) relieves so much pressure. I am most certainly behind due to a winter break full of house renovation/ clean up rather than thesis work, but I will be holding off on moving until the end of the semester to focus on thesis!