Out/o

Akari Ohashi

Lexington, MA

Concentration: 2D Animation & Motion Graphics

Advisor: Heejoo Kim

2D Animation
4 min 49 sec

A girl is sitting on the boat, drifting along the water.

The animation Out/o explores the experience of being pushed and pulled by the magnetic flow of two different cultures. Born in Japan and moving to the United States at a young age, I have often found myself wandering between the culture that I was born in and the culture I grew up in. Being so young, I was not Japanese before coming to the United States. Practicing the curves of the alphabet alongside the stops of hiragana, the open vowels of Japanese and the soft “r”s of English, with each letter and placement of my tongue, I became more American and felt more Japanese.

The animation is my scrutinization of how the two cultures have influenced me as I aged, following the girl rocking in between the red and blue waves, trying to shift in and drift away from each color at certain occasions until she finds her way of embracing both.

Artist Bio

Akari Ohashi is an animator and visual storyteller based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Graduating in May of 2021, she is a Digital Media and Design major at the University of Connecticut, concentrating on 2D animation and Motion Graphics. She has worked on multiple personal and group projects in her studies, such as animating for a projection mapping project for The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, CT. Growing up with Japanese and western animations, Akari found love and curiosity for using moving drawings to tell compelling stories.

https://www.akariohashi.com/
https://akarohashi.wixsite.com/outo

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