For my final Thesis exploration, I wanted to capture the feeling of the past year and a half. As we have all experienced a worldwide pandemic, social and political unrest, loss, and anxiety, we have also undergone such transformation as a collective where we were forced to find new ways to lean on one another and learn to live through history. With this dichotomy of fear and intrigue, I wanted to capture this emotional year with the motif of a carnival funhouse. A funhouse is a place where you go to be entertained, but once inside it can be dark, loud, and overwhelming. With this as my initial starting point, I drew on Surrealist and German Expressionist themes and motifs to create set pieces, filmed them, and then superimposed hand drawn animation to comment on the in-between and liminal nature of this year and maybe not so distant future. The final piece was the installation where one could experience the overwhelm, excitement, fear, and fun of the space and the animations moving, interacting, and playing with the sets and the virtual space.

Lane Letourneau is a graduating senior studying Fine Arts with a minor in film at Cornell University. Working primarily in animation and video, Lane explores the sweeping question of what it means to be human looking specifically at the intersection of emotion and storytelling. The energy within the pieces punctuates feelings she is trying to convey and that hopefully resonate with the audience. Lane will be going to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the commercial as well as experimental animation field.