Winner | BFA Thesis Film CIA 2024

Hello! My name is Brittany, an animation major, and this is my 2024 BFA Thesis film for Cleveland Institute of Art. It’s been a wild 4 years, but I’m glad I was able to create so many cool things.
Thesis statement: Arguments between friends are common, but true friends will self-reflect, learn from their mistakes, and apologize when they happen. Friendships aren’t one-sided.
I wanted to do my thesis film on my beloved ocs, Jonah and Tyler. Jonah being the blonde boy and Tyler being his best friend in the red shirt. They were both created around freshman year of high school so, like, 9 years ago. That’s a long time. I co-created them with my high school best friend. I love these boys as if they were my children lmao.
This film would take place in an alternate universe since their original story is based in a zombie apocalypse. Or maybe this happens before the outbreak. Who knows. I know I could make this better, sorry wise with hindsight, but I’m content with where it ended up.
Troy, the bully guy, is also an original character of mine, but he came into existence only like 2 years ago. He’s very different in this film compared to his original self. In “canon” he’s the stoner high school boy. Like shaggy. In this he’s an athletic bully. Both versions of him, however, are on the basketball team with Jonah. There’s a little lore for you.
Anyways, I plan to do more animations of my boys and finish their story that I’ve been writing ever since high school. There are so many versions of it that my friend and I’ve written. There’s also a lot of inspiration from TWD in my version of the story. Almost too much so I’ll have to start steering away from that.
Thank you for watching and thank you to everyone who helped me get to this point!
(Also it’s mainly a no dialogue film because 1: I wanted to focus on character acting, 2: I didn’t want to deal with writing dialogue, recording it, and then animating lipsync. That would have taken even more time and I was doing this film by myself. 3: since I’ve had these characters for 9 years, I already have specific voices in my head for them, and I didn’t know who’d I’d ask to voice them).

[@askavega]

Awsome work man, How long you made this video? I'm just started to draw again after long time.

[@thatsalexforya]

If you’re asking how long it took to make, then it was my whole senior year. Two semesters. First semester the storyboarding process then second semester rough animation, clean up, and sound. Just for one class through. I also I had other class work to do on top of this. It was fun though! Thanks! I hope you are enjoying your time drawing again!