TITLE: Tyro
MEDIA: mp4
SOFTWARE: Adobe Premiere, Splice app, Adobe Photoshop, Procreate, Toon Boom Harmony
HARDWARE: iMac Os X, PC, and Ipad
SPECIFICATIONS: 3840pxX2160px
CLASS: FMX 499 Senior Project
PROFESSOR: Marcio Goncalves
SEMESTER / TERM: Spring 2023
INSTITUTION: University of Tampa
LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b34h8k4l93t8kji/tyro_pickard_donev2.mp4?raw=1
DESCRIPTION: Jellybean, a young stray corgi mix, tries to impress people in order to find a home. That is ’til he notices a girl sitting on the steps…

Statement:

Jaiden Pickard

BFA in Animation

Spring 2023

During this semester, I was presented some new challenges in life. My father got cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy and my grandmother (on my father’s side), who has dementia, moved in with us. So, it was unsurprising that during the beginning of this semester, I went through a huge art block and found it hard to start working on this project.

However, my senior project’s storyline had already been under development for about 3 years. I was inspired by works such as Pixar’s Piper (2016) to tell a story that is more impactful. Back when I was at Solano Community College, I began researching diabetic alert dogs and immediately knew this was what I wanted my senior project to be. The story over the years has majorly changed and was eventually split up into two different animations. The first being that of Egg Hunt which was made in the fall of 2022. Egg Hunt was originally going to be the prologue and a dream sequence. The second is now my senior project titled Tyro (2023).

While working on the project, my character designs and fluid animation were my biggest strengths. Both of which give an appealing look to the cartoon. However, my setting designs were my biggest setback. It took months to settle on the character designs, but it took even longer to finalize the backgrounds. The backgrounds were not completed until 2-3 weeks before the deadline. Another smaller issue I ran into was having technical difficulties with Toon Boom Harmony. But as quickly as this problem began, I was able to solve it on my own.

After I graduate, I hope to work for a TV animation studio, but would not be upset if I ended up working in 3D animation making movies. In this semester, I was reminded of both the upsides and downsides to both forms of animation and fell in love with both. In conclusion, as long as I get to work on any form of animation, I feel it will all have been worth it.