Christian Bengel BFA Animated Arts Thesis Spring 2021

Dual for the Sundisk

Dual For The Sundisk is a 2D animated action short film about a wizard in a sci-fi battle suit fighting a magic robot with speakers for limbs. The two fight for a magic artifact called the Sundisk. The film is meant to be a slice of a much larger story that I have had in my head for the last several years. The greater story’s premise is that a group of unlikely heroes travels across an alternate earth in which magic was real. The narrative would follow eight characters, four heroes, and four villains. The basic premise would see the two groups constantly clash as the heroes try to keep various magical artifacts safe from the villains all while learning about the different histories of the places they visit.

This specific project was going to be much more narrative-heavy and it was to be a sequel to my junior film, “Legend of The Sun Disk” and follow Lee, one of the aforementioned heroes as he fought waveform for the disk in a much more narrative-heavy capacity that would have hinted at the greater story elements in place. However, due to the limited time granted to create this project I retooled it to focus on one goal which was to create an effective fight scene. This meant I got to focus more on the animation itself. The film is animated entirely within the TVPaint software program. The editing was done in Adobe Premiere. The storyboarding and the animatic were completed in the drawing software Procreate. My goals with this project were fairly simple. I wanted to test my abilities in action animation. More specifically I wanted to push myself to try and deliver on an animated project that has choreography and effects that can come across as visually engaging, I also wanted to test my current abilities as an animator. I haven’t had a chance to experiment with this type of animation before and I want to see just how far I can take it. All of these elements together have created a project that I am very proud of and excited to share at my defense. I feel like through this project I’ve also learned a lot about myself and my current skill level and it has helped me assess what direction I want to go as I continue to pursue my craft and also helped me see where I can improve. I hope this short film can show both my love for the genre of action animation and my passion for my craft as a whole.

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Spring 2021