Illusions of Grandeur
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Illusions of Grandeur is a representation of my own struggles with depersonalization and the desire to escape reality. Taking inspiration from 90s anime style and storytelling, with primary influences from Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain.
The narrative theme exemplifies the issues of modern work life and the ideas of losing one’s self to their work, finding it easier to become a cog in the machine rather than face the real life issues within yourself. Hence escaping into a world within the computer instead of noticing the world around you. Illusions of Grandeur was animated digitally, following a color palette shift to show the difference of the two worlds. One being bright and purple, with harsher lines and forms to show reality. While the digital world used greens and blacks, with hazier imagery. Working on Illusions of Grandeur allowed me to play a lot with design elements I have tried to achieve within a lot of my past work, mostly within illustrations, and seeing how those played out within a film. This project gave me the opportunity to expand on those elements and also understand the difficulty within them with this being my first major animated project. This film was a real passion project for me and a personal testament to my overwhelming desire to create. It was an exhausting project, taking the span of a year in its entirety, causing me many sleepless nights and the worst back pain from the phenomenon of animator posture, but it was so worth it. It felt so surreal watching it finished for the first time, seeing this world I created from a passing thought in my head being brought to life was the best feeling in the world.
Film by Gwynne Duchene (they/them)
Hello! I am Gwynne Duchene a 2D artist originally from Broomfield Colorado, I pursued a degree in 2D Animation at Pratt Institute. Now, I love to create silly little guys and make them go through intense situations. In my animations I aim to create characters that compel people. I want my audience to find relatability within my stories and to really feel something when they interact with what I make. To me having characters that make other people feel seen is what makes my artistic work worth it, I believe that seeing a fictional character that is relatable inspires others to want to create as well.
I enjoy making works in grungy, dark environments, with a lot of texture and dark lines and then contrasting those environments with a character that is brighter and cleaner looking. There is a quality of the outside reflecting what is felt on the inside that I hope to achieve with looks like this. The quality of cinematography is always my biggest inspiration and desire within my work, how every part of the set and character design is intentional, I want them to be a part of the story. In Illusions of Grandeur I really tried to convey this, with my character being bright and cool looking, but the world around her being darker and dirtier to reflect how she is feeling inside.