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Have you ever had that feeling that someone or… something is in the room with you? By all accounts, you should be alone. Yet you can’t shake that feeling that the shadows are darker than you remember. That something is moving just out of the corner of your eye. For our protagonist, Hugh Orlock, this feeling is becoming all too real.
Watch Travis McNutt making The Night Shift
Relationships between humans are complicated. They are ubiquitous, unpredictable, and sometimes invisible. We have our own network with people around us, similar to the ways that trees use their roots and fungal networks to transfer signals and nutrients under the soil. However, those communications are not always positive. In fact, oppression and manipulation happen in inconspicuous ways, which may end up in great loss. In this project, I use “roots” as a metaphor to show the invisible links that can suck nutrients (happiness, energy, dignity…) from others.
– Learn about the making of Root on Ziying Yi’s website
Mental health issues are often intangible, complex, and can be difficult to discuss. They can create an adverse impact on anyone’s life; and by anyone I am specifically referring to a successful mongoose, a god-slayer, an eccentric mechanic, and a cactus. Even these oddballs struggle everyday trying to cope with depression, anxiety, and other mental ailments that can often be crippling. Bodacious Bonkor Ball is a stylized 3d animation which aims to show the struggles of mental health issues through the lens of surreal humor and bizarre characters who parody various video game genres and tropes.
See Colin Moreland’s video about the making of Bodacious Bonkor Ball
Happy Lane is a psychological horror game that takes place in China. The game is a semester-long collaborative project by Art&Tech BFA student William Yuan and Design MFA student Jiaxing Gao. The game strives to capture the experience of a domestic abuse victim, named Ningchuan, in a 1st-person perspective. As Ningchuan, the player navigates a ghostly childhood home and a mysterious mental hospital. Ningchuan must investigate by finding artifacts and solving numerous puzzles in the environment in order to move on. Also hunted by a supernatural threat, Ningchuan’s only hope of escape lies in discovering the terrible truth that has been long hidden from him.
– Learn more about the Happy Lane video game on Will Yuan’s website
What is a toy?
When you are a kid, a toy is a tool for developing imagination, narrative, and communication skills. The toys we choose help us to build stories. They are a reflection of our interests, personalities, and furthermore can be a precursor to the kind of person we will become.
My artist toy series is a self-reflection collage. As an artist I am inspired by fantasy and invested in narrative forms and world-building. As a person, I use fantasy to escape from the negative feelings and qualities of my everyday life. Combining these ideas, I’ve created other-worldly characters in the form of toys to represent the many different aspects of myself. Each toy has their own story, tied to my own. My hope is that the viewers will be able to see parts of themselves in these characters and reconnect with their childhood selves.
– Learn more about Nano Crane on Pen Anders’ website
Love, Me is a continuing community project that is comprised of collections of short stories based on submitted advice. As of December 2021, the series features three self-publihsed comic books and twenty-three originally designed, featured animal characters.
More information about the Love, Me comic book on Sydney Kit’s Website
A Leaf Story is inspired by my own life – my long-distance friendships and difficulty with being so far away from family. It is the introduction of a larger story about the bond formed between two leaves and the challenges they face as their branches grow in different directions. While the story in its entirety is an acknowledgement of the unpredictability of life, this portion is reminiscent of childhood as we see the young leaf experience friendship and the world around him for the first time.
See the video about how and why Ally Sedlock made a leaf story
What is an optical illusion? For decades, people have taken advantage of the shortcuts our brain makes to process visual information to create intriguing and confusing images. The works of MC Escher are a prime example, manipulating lines and shade to create impossible, but seemingly realistic 3D forms. These images delight me with their ability to fool the eye with such simplicity. Title is a 3D animation that explores the boundaries of 2D and 3D using optical illusions. By adding time and camera movement into the classic 2D illusions, a balancing act is created to preserve the illusion and take the viewer through a playful visual experience.
– See how Alice Jiang made Optical Illusions and Where to Find Them.
Centering around the relationship between a young Taiwanese-American girl and her grandmother, Painted Connection was formed from my own experience as an Asian American. Travelling to Taiwan has always been a comfort for my parents, but for me there is a feeling of excitement, fear, and most of all, imposter syndrome. When I’m surrounded by family I blank out, unable to communicate with anyone. As a child, the overwhelming disconnect left me feeling rejected by my culture. Although I felt a disconnection from my surroundings, there’s always one room I could count on to put me in awe, my grandparent’s art room. I’ve come to realize that it isn’t necessary to fully understand something to appreciate its beauty.
See how Amanda Hsieh created Painted Connection
Proelia started as a sport/game inside the world of Avalon, a novel series I am in the process of writing. Since being an author and an artist are extremely important to me, Proelia was the natural choice as my senior exhibition project.
See how Rustin Petrae created his game Proelia
Felicity is a 2d animation that reimagines Madame d’Aulnoy’s The Isle of Happiness through the eyes of its heroine and seeks to challenge gender-conforming roles in classic fairytales. The animation is projected onto two opposing walls and invades the space of the viewer by flowing back and forth between the opposite ends of the room. This work uses moving imagery to challenge the language barrier of the original text. Long, superfluous speeches and romantic declarations are removed but themes of fairytale marvel and comradery remain universally understandable.
– Learn more about the making of Felicity on Olivia Luo’s website
The Art of Augustus is a continuation and exploration of my original comic titled Augustus. This project initially started as a simple world building exercise but soon developed into a passion project that uses visual storytelling to develop the world of Augustus further. This work aims to create a believable landscape and reality that continues to tell the story of my comic purely through visual development and concept art. Focusing on the process of creating a world, this book will give insight on my ideas, sketches, and initial hesitations when I started to create this new reality. I also put my emotions and aspirations within this project. The world that I build in this project reflects on my fears, dilemmas, and passion for art.
– Joshua Lee
Angel is a series of illustrations representing natural disasters caused by humans. It imagines a future, in which humans have developed a humanoid weapon for a war that goes missing. After that, planetary disasters are increasingly severe. The semi-mechanical, semi-biological monster, which does not know where it comes from, always appears in the scene of various disasters. No one knows whether these disasters are natural or caused by this monster. But it was recognized that the monster looked like “Angel”, a humanoid weapon lost in a world war long ago…
– Sifei Miao