Christopher Cordingley's "After You" is another one of these great thesis projects from students coming out of Ringling. The screenshots don't do the film justice, as the real magic is in the animation, particularly in the acting. The subtlety and communicativity of the characters' facial expressions alone are worthy of study.

I encourage you to go have a look at this simple but excellently put-together piece of animation.

'After You' was my senior project from Ringling School of Art and Design. I knew I wanted to get a job doing animation, so keeping things simple was a good plan for me. Luckily, it worked well for the story too. A minimal set design, simple lighting, just two characters and no dialogue really helped me focus on the story and animation. I even used a default font for the title. haha...

CLICK TO VISIT THE "AFTER YOU" WEBSITE

My main priority while working on this was to get the characters down. I'm really interested in the subtleties of acting and so I spent most of my time figuring out who they were. I still don't feel that I know them very well, but having spent so much time with them, the acting came much more easily. I really love how character and story are so intertwined. I tried to have my characters drive my story as much as possible with the whole 'put them together and see what they do' mentality. It actually felt like improv for the most part.

"A lot of people say that they would have a hard time writing a story without using dialogue. It's actually harder for me to imagine writing a story with dialogue than without."      - Christopher Cordingley

A lot of people say that they would have a hard time writing a story without using dialogue. It's actually harder for me to imagine writing a story with dialogue than without. I feel that I might stress out about what words to use because they have so much power to dictate what the audience should feel. Not to say that I didn't go through a lot of stress over 'After You'. haha! Hmm, actually that part wasn't very funny. But I did have fun, and I look forward to doing it again!

Thinking back, there was nothing more valuable to me than the feedback and suggestions that I received from other people. I cannot say, 'I did this all by myself.' Without the creative influences around me, my piece would have had far less potential from the very start.