Showcase

Hey there~! I am Lillian Casazza, I was first year animation student at Freestyle Academy and an upcoming Cornell student pursuing my B.Arch. Photography is my favorite hobby and the lens of my expression. The past several years, I found a growing love for architecture. I strongly value culture, nature, community, and self-expression. I hope you will see that reflected in my work. I was incredibly STEM-oriented and I hoped by joining Freestyle my senior year, it would help me have more insight on helping me develop my creativity and give me the opportunities to explore several new mediums. And I done exactly that, and so much more. Unexpectedly, after all my college applications, a college English class and Freestyle English, I tapped into a new passion of creativity through writing, my favorite work from Freestyle stems from the written papers that inspired the visual works. Being around fellow creative-minds and by learning so many technical skills at Freestyle, has made me more creative in my normal student and personal life.

Showcase Video

When a mundane office worker can suddenly no longer sleep, he struggles to continue his normal life while resisting his deteriorating psychosis.

Animation Reel

Reflection

My Worldbuilding project was my favorite production from high school. I was extremely invested in critically thinking about complex ideas. My Junior year, I wrote a research paper about redefining the American Dream, so for this year’s essay, I wanted to expand this upon this idea. Specifically how work culture in most corporate jobs is threatening human consciousness, because how its structured, it discourages certain forms of creativity and intellectual freedom. Humans are unique from every other species because of our creativity. Without it, like what is demonstrated in this city, we become like an ant colony. I explored some hybrid models of the typical 9-5 that could help combat this, and also delved into issues regarding corporations and people in power having attitudes towards creativity that is manipulative and subtly harmful.  To combat opposing opinions. These hybrid models actually improve efficiency in the short and long term, and we know this because we have seen major corporations like Google, Facebook, and Dropbox have already started implementing these work models.

I am glad I continued to pursue it for my Zenith, even if it was incredibly ambitious and challenging. I was a first year senior, so I did not learn 2D animation junior year, and I was not that experienced in drawing things besides buildings. Through this project I learned how to use Adobe Animate and 2D animating techniques. As expected, I did not entirely finish this production, I made it to the beginning of Act 2 while missing some scenes and depth. However, I was extremely passionate about this project and will finish it in my own time. Progress will be updated on my personal website: https://thelillianczza.wordpress.com/

If you would like to hear about my thoughts on my Zenith I suggest listening to my full Zenith reflection.

The other projects shown in my Reel are my Narrative Animation and Lip Sync Animation.

The Narrative Animation was a group project in which we were tasked with making a story using the 3D animation skills we learned the previous 5 months. I was the leader for my group, and we wanted do create something visually pleasing, incorporates lighting, and 2D animation. We came up with the concept of doing a night scene at a Japanese Festival. Since we did not want to reuse any of our individual character models, we decided on a plot that minimized the amount of work we had to do.

It was a difficult project because our group wanted to create a production that was near-impossible for the amount of time we had to finish it, in addition, we could only work on it during class since we did not have the programs at home. We ran into many issues from UV mappings, to renders failing, lighting, and so on. But when we finished we were very happy with our final product. We jokingly named the project at the beginning Lost in Japan based off of the Shawn Mendes song, and so we had to incorporate it in the ending credits. This project was extremely rewarding, useful, and fun, I am glad I got to learn how real animated films work start to finish from communication to the more technical skills.

The Lip Sync Animation was more than just one video. It was a long-term project encompassing several units, in which I had to make a character model and a weapon to learn how to create, texture, color, rig, animate models in various programs such as Maya, ZBrush, and Substance 3D Painter. Not only was it a very fun way to learn all these necessary skills, but it was very effective because I remembered everything for the Narrative Group Animation afterwards.

For more details about these two projects check out…

Oh Freestyle…

As I mentioned before, Freestyle has positively impacted my life by giving me the opportunity to pursue creative passions and teach me all the technical skills I need so that there are no limitations on what I can create. Prior to this year, my experience using technology for production was limited to architecture-related softwares. But after this year, I regularly use Adobe Applications such as Photoshop, Animate, and After Effects, and have full confidence in learned any new software or skill I need. Although I missed the intensity of my old all AP/Honor lifestyle, Freestyle was a great change in pace and I feel as though I have more depth and complexity of a person because of it. And even though not everyone shows they are the most invested in Freestyle and the arts, I could tell deep down everyone is very passionate about making the best thing they possibly can so that they can show off their work. Otherwise, there would not be students putting in the last-minute hours after school and on the weekends.