COALESCE / Your Own Little World
My thesis film, COALESCE, an abstract exploration of what it feels like to organize thoughts as someone with ADHD, as well as how it feels to process the formation of a Self and the congealment of an identity. A meditation on my neurodivergent experience. A nearly four year long project that went through several iterations, several cycles of expansion and contraction, and took lots of different shapes. The culmination of four years of formal education in animation at the University of Southern California.
The final film, finished on March 1st, 2021.
My first concept art for COALESCE, showing a child facing a tangle of strings. The original concept for the film was Your Own Little World, a story about someone's interactions with (and struggles against) their own mind, told mostly from within their “inner world”.
Concept art of Sasha, the main character, facing a face (pun intended) made of strings as an adult. It mirrors the styleframe with child Sasha facing the strings, showing how ADHD is a lifelong struggle.
Concept art of the strings crawling, swimming, and weaving around the branches of a “neuron forest”
Concept art for COALESCE’s opening shot of a massive, undulating web of strings. I ended up using this same art, split into different layers and assets, in the final film.
My first fleshed out concept art of the main character Sasha, as the human avatar they would have appeared as in their inner world in Your Own Little World. I wanted to go for a lineless look tinted blue to contrast Sasha against the strings and unify them with the rest of the hazy blue world.
Concept art of baby Sasha
Lineup of Sasha at different ages
Turnaround of 6-year-old Sasha
Concept art for a tense scene later on in the expanded Your Own Little World narrative where the strings begin to recreate scenes of rejection in Sasha's life, where the inner world, a representation of Sasha's mind, is overrun with negativity.
Concept art continuing to explore a state of rejection-sensitive dysphoria in Sasha's inner world.
The making of COALESCE
Making COALESCE was an intriguing and exciting technical challenge. I used primarily Photoshop and After Effects, with some TVPaint work that ended up not being used in the final film, and did complex rigging, compositing, and 3D scene layouting. I also created the music and sound design used in the final film.
The complex multi-angle full-body Sasha rig I made. I originally planned for Sasha's human form to be onscreen sooner for much longer and interact directly with the strings. Sadly, much of the functionality of this rig doesn't really get seen in the final film.
A variety of screenshots of the process behind the complex morphing shapes sequence.
Sasha posed for a shot
Facial animation and rough layout for a cut shot.
Rough layout of a cut shot, using a reference pencil test.
Rigging notes and brainstorming for how to animate certain Sasha shots.
More rigging notes.
T-posing Sasha looking cheery! Aside from T-posability, this rig has complex facial controls, IK, a 180-degree turn capacity, foot curl and rotation, forearm foreshortening, etc.
A "neuron" with a string curling around a branch.
Lighting test on an older test rig.
An older Sasha test rig, which was side view only.
Very, very rough, ugly, unfinished Sasha animation for a cut shot.
Making another cut shot.
Layout and assets for an unused shot.
Working on various shots in After Effects (1/3)
Working on various shots in After Effects (2/3)
Working on various shots in After Effects (3/3)
Snippet of an older version of the opening shot (1/2)
Snippet of an older version of the opening shot (1/2)
More rigging brainstorming.
Doing sound design and mixing for the final film.
Brainstorming notes for how to approach the production of the opening shot.
Music and sound inspiration slide from a pitch presentation. These albums provided the temp music for my Your Own Little World animatic.
I used expressions to help me set up a "turntable" in After Effect's 3D space where my 5 morphing forms (collections of 2D layers) would always face the camera while rotating with the turntable.
2D layout of "flower" form string assets before being assembled in 3D space. I kept track of each string in each shape.
I hand-keyframed the string's form shifts to create smooth transitions between different string poses and the different drawn assets for each shape/string.
The "flower" form.
Using a reference sphere made of planes to help me layout each string's destination in the sphere formation prior to animating them with puppet pins and giving them their new poses.
Story Development / Storyboards
I decided to go with a more abstract direction for the final film COALESCE (for both creative and practical reasons), but it was originally a lot more traditionally narrative and character driven as Your Own Little World. YOLW, which I still might revive in comic form at some point, is a nonlinear narrative following Sasha. The story of Your Own Little World follows emotional arcs and patterns in Sasha’s life rather than a linear progression of time, jumping back and forth through different times in Sasha’s life as themes and conflicts converge and differently-aged layers of Sasha interact.
Animatic for Your Own Little World, the precursor to COALESCE. It was the blueprint for a short originally intended to be the first act of a larger story about a person with ADHD as they struggle against their symptoms and old wounds of frustration and self-rejection. It features temp music from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient works Vol. 2, Sigur Rós’ score for the documentary Hlemmur, and the soundtrack of the game Rain World (all of which strongly influenced the score I made for COALESCE), and features voice acting by Spencer Divis and Jaqi Howard.
First attempt at visualizing the overall YOLW narrative
Finalized YOLW nonlinear story map
Overview of the digital storyboard panels in the first half of the animatic.
Sketchbook page of rough storyboards that were referenced and used in the second half of the animatic.
Another page of rough storyboards.
Rough storyboards for a complex abstract sequence. Later revised to end with the child forming inside the sphere for COALESCE.
The end of the animatic.
Below, here are some unused boards for a scene in the expanded YOLW narrative where toddler Sasha's mother mistakes symptoms of ADHD for signs that Sasha could be deaf or hard-of-hearing when she picks up on Sasha repeatedly not seeming to hear her calling several times. Inspired by a true story with me and my mom.
Here are some speculative rough boards for expanded parts of the story that weren't included in the animatic or the final film.
Adult Sasha attacks the intimidating string face, but it’s just another Sasha.
Sasha is pulled apart by the strings of their own mind.
Idea for a shot near the middle or end with a self-acceptance vibe; the two differently-aged Sashas dissolve back into strings and overall oneness of Sasha’s mind after adult Sasha finds and comforts child Sasha.
Repeated visual element: class leaving a still-working 10-year-old Sasha behind for recess.
Brainstorming, development of string figure aesthetics.