First Flight
Senior film created at RISD finished May 2014
Winner of the title "Best Animation" at the Brattleboro Film Festival 2014
Selected for screening at Melbourne International Animation Festival 2016
The theme at the core of this narrative is inspired by my feelings in moving from childhood to adulthood as well as the stresses and worries that come with graduating and going out into "the real world." The main character, Kia, is a young kestrel girl testing her wings for the first time. She is a character I have put a lot of myself into, my experiences, my emotions, and my situation at present. I'm thankful that I've always had the support of my family, especially my parents, which I certainly took inspiration from for the mother bird character, Aria.
First Flight - The Making Of
Below is a collection of art from the process of First Flight's production.
All the backgrounds for First Flight were hand-painted with watercolor graphite on Clearprint vellum.
From there, they were scanned and composited digitally; the opening pan contains several scanned and edited paintings layered in Photoshop and animated in After Effects to give a sense of dimensional depth.
I designed static backgrounds around the movement happening in each scene, and in doing so took inspiration from Japanese landscape brush and ink pantings that aim to capture the gesture and essence of the location rather than representing it so literally.
Backgrounds
