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Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses 10-2017 The Nearness Of You Tianyi Yin [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Yin, Tianyi, "The Nearness Of You" (2017). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Nearness Of You By Tianyi Yin AN ANIMATED THESIS PRODUCTION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS IMAGING ARTS/COMPUTER ANIMATION SCHOOL OF FILM AND ANIMATION COLLAGE OF IMAGING ARTS & SCIENCES ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROCHESTER, NEW YORK OCTOBER 2017 Committee ______________________________________________________ Brian Larson, Professor/Animation Program Chair School of Film and Animation ______________________________________________________ Mari Blanchard, Lecturer School of Film and Animation ______________________________________________________ Naghmeh Farzaneh, Lecturer School of Film and Animation Abstract The Nearness Of You is an animated 2D graduate thesis film. The entire film, including the credits, is 4 minutes 55 seconds long. The production phase went from September 2016 to May 2017. This is a love story about two mannequins. The story takes place in a European looking city. The male mannequin meets the female mannequin under a romantic scenario.They fall in love as the time pass by. However, in the end, they don’t get to actually end up together. As a result, the male mannequin gets to have a symbolic figure as the female mannequin and they spend the rest of their lives happily ever after. The Nearness Of You is a 2D animation that made out of lots of software, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, TVPaint Animation 11. The final output format is 1080P HD with a high-quality stereophonic track. This thesis is a combination of challenges, creativity, techniques, and strong personal feelings. 2 Table of Contents Abstract.................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction........................................................................................................................... 5 • Acknowledgments The Nearness Of You Inspiration......................................................................................... 7 • Idea Development • Pre-Visualizing Style Pre-Production.....................................................................................................................10 • Pre-Production in Stages • Storyboard • Animatic • Character Design • Environment Design • Sound Design Production............................................................................................................................24 • Introduction to Production • Character with Background • Animation • Coloring • Improvement • File Management 3 Post-Production....................................................................................................................30 • Compositing • Credits • Fine Edit • Re-export and Release Formats • Sound and Music Critiques and Response.......................................................................................................33 Appendix...............................................................................................................................34 • Original Proposal • Images from The Nearness Of You • Storyboard 4 Introduction The Nearness Of You was a love story that takes place in a romantic European looking imaginative city. One of the main characters: male mannequin was a goofy but romantic wood made craft shop window display. He liked paper folding. To kill boring time in the shop window, he took strangers he saw every day on the street as his paper folding inspiration. One day, a moving truck arrived. Across the street, there was a new female mannequin in a ballet shop. For the male mannequin, it was love at first sight. He made a paper fold female mannequin to show his love. They fell in love slowly as time passing by. One day, the female mannequin somehow got to step out of the shop window. She pulled the male mannequin out and they started to dance on the street. Without the constraint of the shop window, they spent romantic time together. However, all of a sudden the moving truck took the female mannequin away. It turned out the whole romantic getaway was just an illusion in his head. Without being able to keep the emotion inside, the male mannequin set on the floor and starts to cry. Cause by the trembling, the female mannequin paper man fell down in front of him. He picked the paper man up and stared at it affectionately. Finally, he found a way out to have her by his side: glued the little paper man on the shop window glass so he would be able to see her across the street the whole time even only as a symbol. 5 Acknowledgments During the several months of me making this film, I received a lot of help and support. The first person I would like to thank was my thesis chair advisor Brian Larson. He was truly an amazing teacher from every perspective. Not only he had been giving me ideas to make the story better but also been pushing me forward along the way. He also never gave up on me. As a student, it was truly lucky to have a teacher like him in life. The next person I would love to give my thankfulness was one of my committee members, Mari Blanchard. She helped on one of the critical technical problems that I had. Afterward, my coloring production rate went on to another level which also made the production much faster. She was also a great artist. I was amazed by her painting when I saw it the first time in her office. The last committee member I would like to thank was Naghmeh Farzaneh. She was very generous with giving me lots of interesting ideas. Aside from the thesis, she also helped me a lot in my personal life, which on some level was more important than the thesis. Next, I would love to give my appreciation to two people who helped me on acoustic, Ben Strack and Shoghi Hayes. The film would not be complete without their decent skills. Making an animated film was not only about getting through the process. It was also about knowing having the one you love on the side. I would like to give my special thank to my finance, Nicholas Martin Haefner. He had always been there for me when I needed help either on school work or life. At last but not the least, I would like to thank all my classmates. I had learned so much from them in these three years. 6 The Nearness Of You Inspiration Idea Development Idea development could be long and tough, but it could also be fun and intriguing. After several abandoned ideas, I decided that I wanted to do a love story. Love stories are everywhere. I found the love story type could be one of the easiest but could also be one of the hardest to tell. On one hand, it would be easy to find materials or references online due to the numerous amount of love stories that have already been created. On the other hand, since there are already so many of them, it would be hard to produce one that is original and neoteric. I decided that I want to focus on character-development first, and by knowing the character better, the story would hopefully emerge itself later. I started with the bare bone of knowing the fact that I definitely don't want to do a regular human love story. The animal love story type is also something that I felt not interested in. I wanted to have the base of my main characters to be something new and minority. The website Pinterest was where I would spend a lot of time to look for visual inspirations and that was how I found the right base for my characters: I one day saw a picture of a mannequin that is oddly posed in a dusty bookstore on Pinterest, and suddenly I knew that this is what I was looking for- an old, rustic, awkward looking traditional mannequin to be my main character. After have known a general type of the main character, I spontaneously decided to make 7 the other one also as a mannequin since I believed it would make more sense to have them in the same species. Long distance love story was not what I wanted to tell. On the contrary, I did like the idea of keeping both parties close to each other, but still unable to reach the other one. I believed in that kind of scenario it would create more entanglement between the two characters. A beautiful sad love story like Romeo and Juliet was what I wanted, but less sophisticated plots and blood. A sad ending was also something that I felt strongly about. I thought it would exacerbate the sadness of the story and thus makes the audience to have a stronger reaction towards the film. Overall, I wanted this piece to be something that is more on the blue side. Happy ending made me felt boring and unique since almost everyone was doing that. I wanted this piece to be something that reminds people to think about their lost love, and then miss them in a sad beautiful way. Pre-Visualizing Style As for the general visual style of this story, I decided to use a bright-colored based European looking theme. The reason was I had never tried this kind of approach before so I thought it would be a fun challenge. I had also always interested in the look of old classic European buildings, and I felt it would be perfect as a setting for a tragic love story. Instead of using dark, unsaturated color, I believed a brighter color palette would make the film more animation flavored. Another intention of using a bright-colored palette was to provide a happy illusion at first in this piece, which could make the sad 8 ending more impactive in the end. The Triplets of Belleville, which was one of the animated films I had watched. I believed it would be great to have this piece to be the building/background reference for my thesis.

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