LogFAQs > #875712315

I am currently 30 years old, and as a freshman in college at Savannah College of Art and Design about 11 years ago I set out to make a senior thesis that was going to be above and beyond the commonly held standards for such work. My goal soon went from winning a Student Academy Award, to an outright Academy Award. In addition to learning the craft of filmmaking, art, and animation at college I spent many more hours trying to come up with an idea that was worthy of such lofty goals. Due to the arduous and strenuous nature of such a pursuit, my mental health and personal life suffered, and is still suffering to this day.

My goal originally was to have this film be a intensive collaborative effort based on whatever idea I came up with. Towards the end of college however, I had not come up with an idea that satisfied what I thought would be the necessary standards for such a work. Dejected, I marched towards the end of my college career without a sufficient idea. The only idea that I did come up with I was not entirely pleased with, and consisted of a loose story involving a moth, spider, and slightly based on "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". It was to be done in a very crude form of animation called "playblast", which is typically reserved for testing animation before being rendered.

In one of the final classes related to my senior thesis, I shared my idea with the professor and the class. I told them that it involved a bunch of metaphors involving light, religion, truth, and science. At one point the professor (who is named Jason Maurer and was one of the directors of the film "Delgo"), pointed out that my film shared some similarities with "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. At first I was extremely dismissive because I had read that story in school and thought it was a weird story by a weird guy, and seemed like the whole story was a metaphor for coming out of the closet. Eventually though I shelved my original idea though, and ended up deciding to do a film based on "The Metamorphosis" after further thinking and research.

By then however it was too late. Everyone at school was already heavily invested in their own projects and while I was able to find some people willing to help me work on this project, it was not the kind of help I thought was necessary to achieve my goals. I then ended up doing some "playblast" animation to the new Kanye West album at the time "808's and Heartbreak", got put on academic probation, and left school about 10 credit hours and 2 classes short of a degree.

I moved back in with my parents (who I still live with to this day) and decided to pursue making a film based on "The Metamorphosis" entirely by myself. The going was rough and my mental health and personal life deteriorated even further with me ending up being hospitalized several times for psychiatric reasons.

I never gave up on my goal however, and about a year ago officially completed my film based on "The Metamorphosis". Despite many hours of research and concept work, It is done in a "playblast" style animation that is intentionally crude and abrasive. For some reason that just seems more honest than making a polished work of art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYZBS1eye_E
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I don't think so, Tim.
~~ Pizza Crew ~~