The Creative Man: My Thesis

One of the requirements for getting a MFA at DigiPen is to execute a Thesis Project. This is essentially over a year of planning, designing, drawing, painting, modeling, texturing, animating, and polishing in order to grow as an artist and show your stuff. It's an opportunity to work hard on something and let it represent your tastes and personality in the field that you are striving to work in. 

I had a choice of creating content that would inhabit either a video game or a film (or anything else that the professors deemed appropriate, depending upon my passion). I chose to create 4 characters for a short film in the vein of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries and Aardman Entertainment's Creature Comforts. I had originally thought it might be fun to have a cast of characters that were all entered into a county fair art contest (which I may pursue eventually, because I'm still attracted to the idea).

I eventually came up with the idea of an outer space dog show in which the "dogs" are abducted humans and the trainers/owners are outer space beings. 

Over the coming year, I will be going over the work that I put into this project, tentatively named Human Show, and sharing what I hope will be helpful information for others that are looking to do something similar! Keep checking back and looking to see how it's going.

Here's a little look at a "movie poster" that I had to cook up for my Thesis pitch (for which I have a video detailing how to approach a pitch). 

Do Work! - Pitching an Idea

Part of the program I'm in at DigiPen, really the main part, is to create a Thesis project from the ground up. It is intended to become our showcase for the two years that we spend there and a marker of our skills, motivation, and ambition. The project itself consists of creating 2-4 (or more) characters that inhabit a distinct world and taking them from inception through design and to final 3D rendering, rigging, and animation. Other aspects of the project can cater to the student's individual desires. For me, that is writing and humor (as you can tell by how hilarious I'm being), potentially working itself out in a short animatic.

As I work through this process I will be posting videos and updates about my working methods and progress.

This first video is about how I pitched my idea to the Thesis Committee. I give tips on what worked well for me and what is important when developing your idea and trying to communicate the premise to other people.

This video was filmed in a high-end studio made to look like a bedroom.