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The High Flier
BFA Thesis Exhibition
Cleveland Institute of Art
Logline
A nervous young aerialist-in-training desperately wants to find her place and make a name for herself in the circus troupe, but to do so she must face her fears and learn to walk (or fly) on her own.
Thesis Statement
In order for one to reap the benefits of success, risks must be taken. The fear of failure hinders people’s paths to success, but trying and failing will usually yield better results than inaction.
Proposal
I will use frame-by-frame animation to create a short film with a thoughtful and pensive tone that still captures the lightheartedness associated with simplistic cartoon art styles. I want to experiment with the “retro” style and capture realistic emotion and body language through the characters’ very simplified features.
The art and animation styles I'm using were inspired by animated advertisements of the 1950s, as well as Depression-era cartoons such as the Betty Boop films.
Story Process
Characters
April Flowers
A young woman eager to prove herself as a competent trapeze artist, once she can get over her fear of failure.
Mags
April’s stern trainer, a star trapeze artist known for death-defying aerial tricks. She’s aging, though, and wants to see April take her place someday.
Visual Development
These are a few of my initial sketches while brainstorming.
I created some of the characters in this film back in high school for a series of circus-themed illustrations. In my sophomore year at CIA, I retooled the trapeze artist/funambulist for a character design project, and gave her the name April Flowers.
Since then, I ended up using her for a few other projects in other classes, too, such as the above poster.
(And here are my first sketches of a few of the characters, including April, from 2010!)
Backgrounds
These backgrounds were sketched by me, then cleaned up and painted by Stephanie Haught (shaughtart@gmail.com).
(They did an awesome job!)
I did a lot of research on circus grounds, tent construction, trapeze rigging, and props. In the end I did end up taking some creative liberties for the narrative's and time's sake, however.
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