2021 UConn DMD BFA Senior Exhibition

Student Work

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Sleight of Hand

Sophia Galante

Bethel, CT
Concentration: 2D Animation & Motion Graphics
Advisor: Samantha Olschan

2D Animation
8 min 55 sec

Sleight of Hand follows a poor street magician as he tries to win a magic competition to gain money, but gets in a little over his head when he realizes the prize is more than he bargained for.

As a piece, this work mainly explores how the actions of bystanders, no matter how ineffectual they might be, are still better than doing nothing in a situation that's harmful to others. In the real world, the way many bystanders to abuse or bullying decide to step in is based on their amount of schadenfreude– how much pleasure or joy one takes in seeing someone else's injuries or troubles—for the situation, which itself stems from how much they believe the victim deserves such behaviour. As a common theme for older fairy tales has taught us, though, there is no pleasure to be found in the suffering of princesses or damsels in distress—not unless you're a villain—and that princesses must be saved by a hero. So, when this story shows a princess in need of aid, then, the viewer's automatic first instinct is that the protagonist will be able to rescue her—an idea that is quickly crushed when the true nature of the competition is revealed, and our hero is revealed to be powerless. In this way, the magicians who are competing to marry her become the villains, and our hero downgrades to simply 'underdog.' Though there is no outright or physical fight between the hero and villains in this story, it still becomes a clash of morals. While the protagonist chooses not to ignore the princess' plight and participate in her passive mistreatment despite his powerlessness and inability to help her outright in the situation, the other two mages' choose to participate in active mistreatment of her by fighting for her hand regardless of her clear distaste for the situation.

In the process of creating this project, I have come up with the plot, design the characters, thumbnail, storyboard, sequence the boards, and animate to create the (hopefully) final project. The storyboards were completed using Adobe Photoshop, animation was completed with Adobe Animate, and compositing and editing were done in Adobe After Effects and Premiere.


Artist Bio

Sophia Galante is a senior in the University of Connecticut, Digital Media & Design program, hoping to get a job storyboarding for animated movies in the future. She'll receive her BFA when she graduates in the fall of 2021, though she's thinking about continuing school to further hone her abilities before job hunting. Galante has been drawing and interested in an artistic career from a young age, deciding to narrow in on drawing when choosing what path she wanted to pursue. With any luck, by the time she has to move out to California, rent prices will be cheaper and the wildfires will have died down. Despite usually just being a fan-artist, Galante has recently begun branching out and trying to create her own stories. Inspired by the happy endings of Disney fairytales, a younger Galante became enamoured with the idea of falling in love and living happily ever after, which quickly became a common theme in her stories. This trend inspired her adoration for The Legend of Zelda video game series, which in turn ignited her interest in using medieval worlds as a setting and is currently a staple of her work. Perhaps also willed by spite toward endings like that of the recent Game Of Thrones, she also strives to create stories that people of any age can enjoy with minimal investment.

https://sophiagalante.wixsite.com/mysite

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