(gentle music) - My name is Lucie Lee.

I am a senior at the School of Visual Arts, studying 3D Animation and Visual Effects.

I originally wanted to become a surgeon ever since I was five years old, but at the age of 16 or 17, I watched "Frozen 2" and instantly, I wanted to become an animator.

(sophisticated music) There's something so magical about movement and artistry in an animated film that I found so ethereal.

(sophisticated music) My thesis film called "Beyond the Journey" is told in the perspective of Louise, who is the protagonist of the story.

Louise is retelling a fable about these two rabbit children in a very unhappy household with wolf parents, which leads to a lot of unhappiness and feelings of unworthiness.

The rabbits, in shadows they hide.

From terrors and trembles, nowhere to find.

(subdued music) - The inspiration behind my film started out when I was 16, I lost a very close friend of mine.

What seemed to him like an infinity of depression and hopelessness led him to take his own life on the train track.

Since then, the image of the train track has stuck with me.

I created a lot of artwork paintings and poems ever since his death in order to cope with my own grief.

For this film, I took one of the poems that I wrote and added what I've learned from the experience.

The first half of the poem was written in the perspective of him and how he must have felt leading up to his decision to take his own life.

And then, the latter half was told in the perspective of me and all of the things that I wish he could have known and wish I could have said to him.

I wish you'd known how precious, how known, how loved you were.

(gentle music) My protagonist, Louise, is a wooden puppet.

Even though she was made in computer fully, I wanted to make sure that she looked and functioned like a wooden puppet.

What I love about puppets is the ephemeral quality.

They're made out of materials that can decay over time.

They're made with human hands.

It's a time-consuming handcrafted art.

(soft upbeat music) You think I should re-render this, right?

- [Joowon] Yeah, re-render that.

- I approached my thesis partner, Joowon, when I was a junior.

When I finalized my script and finished storyboarding, I went to her, knowing that she's a very talented artist.

I want to work with her for the next year and a half.

- I'm specializing in lighting and my teammate, Lucie, is specializing in texturing.

Mainly what I did was decide what vibe we're going for.

Since the lighting is deciding the whole atmosphere, I do more like a realistic stuff and Lucie do more like stylized stuff.

That's why we had three different world in our thesis film.

One is stop motion-y style, and then the other one is real life world.

And the last one is meta world, which is in 2D.

I was more in charge of real life world.

I was focusing on how to present the 3D more realistic than the other two world.

(soft upbeat music) - As soon as he gets hit by the train, then there'll be like a sound effect of like, pzzing.

- Okay.

And we can have the music like kinda swell into the moment to really emphasize that.

My name is Lena Breining and I'm the composer for "Beyond the Journey".

(mystical music) I think my favorite scene to compose for was the journey scene just because it was so magical and so fantastical.

I think it's visually so stunning and so gorgeous.

I had a lot of fun adding my own touches of music to that scene.

(mystical music) - [Lucie] And on the dragonfly, he soared, amongst the night sky he so adored.

(mystical music) - I love scoring animations because animation has no boundaries and I really love that there's not really anything holding you back from doing whatever you want in the music and in the animation, and I think that's really special.

- This is one of the most beautiful animated short films I've seen, not just from students, overall.

My favorite shot in Lucie's film is the one where the protagonist arrives with the music box, the train tracks, and the camera shifts around her, and this is a pivotal moment in the film.

This is the moment where the protagonist, reflecting Lucie, found some closure from the tragedy.

That camera move that happens in that moment is a metaphor from her shifting point of view, from the pain and the anguish, to the realization of the miracle that is life and the optimism she wants to convey to the audience.

(bright music) They set out to do this shot without knowing exactly how to solve it technically because it has so many high level skills required, from an animation point of view, lighting, there had to be simulation, they had to use multiple softwares to make it happen, softwares they didn't know, or techniques within those softwares they didn't know, to then bring it all together.

And at the end, shift even the visual style to hand-drawn frame by frame paint to textures.

I admire their tenacity of wanting to highlight the most important moment in the film with the most advanced techniques.

- What I hope the viewers would get from watching this film is a moment of reflection.

You know, it's not often that we really sit and think about the miracle of being here and the very fact that you have these eyes that perceive the world around you, hands to be able to create things you want to make, the soul for you to love.

I hope that people have the chance to see this glimpse of magic.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues)