Simple and sweet stories
With every piece of art, Sabrina's exercises her visual storytelling skills. She uses comics, animatics, and films to communicate stories in their rawest, simplest forms.
Whether it's the everyday struggle of waking up or a tiny man's adventures, Sabrina designs her stories to evoke emotion and thought. Scroll down for examples of Sabrina's stories and some thoughts on her inspiration.
REST
For some people, rest is always one step away. While studying for my undergraduate degree, there have been a few times when I treated rest like an appointment I had to constantly reschedule. Even though it's okay to work hard and push yourself, it's important to understand your body's limits. I used this inspiration as an opportunity to experiment with puppetry, stop motion, color design, and more. Honestly, producing this film was one of my favorite experiences as an animator.
Rough storyboards
Motion test
Film
Lonely Anonymous
Lonely Anonymous
Lonely Anonymous is one of those ideas that pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night and typed its way into a computer document before I fell back asleep.The summer before my senior year was riddled with quickly-jotted ideas, but this is the one I chose for my senior thesis. What interests me about loneliness is its paradoxical nature. The feeling is the crux of isolation and separation, yet it connects us all by being such a universal emotion. Even though the characters in this film have different lives and personalities, they all share the same experience that is loneliness.
Rough storyboards
Early Script
Character Designs
Daily Comics
During the Fall of 2017, I was introduced to the idea of daily creative habits. For the next few months, I decided to make a comic every day, each taking around 30 minutes to make. I focused on capturing an emotion or story in every comic. By the end of the exercise, I had exercised my drawing skills, idea generation, and visual storytelling. You can find more comics on my Instagram.
Illustrated Comics
RISE
Sometimes, the hardest struggle is simply rising out of bed. As someone who experiences suicidal thoughts, I created this film to illustrate that struggle and appreciate the warriors who fight for purpose in everyday living. Details and characters changed as the story developed, but the theme remained consistent while I experimented with dramatic camera angles and a surreal headspace environment.
Concept sketches
Early storyboards
Animatic
Mini Man
Mini Man was created during a particularly long church service, sizing up to no bigger than my thumb. I liked him, and having just made an Instagram account, I used him as some of my early public content. Every Monday, I posted a doodle of Mini Man and journaled his weekly adventures. Using Instagram as a for storytelling format was unconventional, but effective for Mini Man's particular tale.
Mini Man
Please, Stop
How does an artist evoke an emotional response in less than thirty seconds? How does a filmmaker make an animation studio out of a college dorm? How do I make a stop-motion film for the first time? Answering these questions helped me develop the problem solving skills that are crucial for story development, forcing me to think creatively and practically. I'm honored to have this film selected in the 2017 Columbus International Film and Video Festival (now called Columbus International Film and Animation Festival).
Film