Author: Sarah Whitty

Steve Job’s speech really speaks to me about life and its expectations. Despite The pressure set up for him to attend college from the time he was born, he gave it a shot, and found it wasn’t for him. In choosing to drop out and form his own path is where he found success. And even once he found success, it wasn’t a happily ever after. He faced another huge struggle being fired from his own company, but eventually used it as a chance at a new beginning instead of allowing it to drag him down. This is the sort of mindset I hope to carry through life. Everything is temporary, and change is constant, so you must keep looking to the future and knowing that if you are not happy with where you are now, you can find a way to get to where you want to be.

These concepts can be applied to any aspect of your life, even a senior thesis project. There’s a long road ahead that will bring many challenges and changes, but I hope to welcome and overcome them the best I can to produce something I can be proud of.

For my senior thesis project, I’m interested in creating a series of motion graphics inspired by music. I’m inspired by graphics that both accompany live musical performances and smaller scale looping graphics that accompany tracks on Spotify Mobile. I’d like to create motion/video graphics that will accompany a song and add more depth and elements of storytelling when paired with the music.

This past summer I interned for a marketing company doing motion graphics and video editing, gaining more experience using After Effects and video editing software. I really enjoyed it, so I’d like to strengthen my motion graphic skills and create some work for myself. I was inspired by the looping motion graphics which accompany many songs on Spotify Mobile, and would love to try my hand at creating my own.

Over the summer I also went to a Billie Eilish Concert where I was captivated by the background visuals which spanned 3 huge screens and the stage itself, and the ways which they accompanied her performance so well. With my thesis I’d love to create a variety of visuals that tell a story when paired with pieces of music.

I’ll likely have to reach out to the artists who’s work I’m interested in using for permission, but I guess it’s all part of the process. I’m hoping to create some looping, formatted for mobile, “spotify-esque” graphics as well as some longer, standard video format graphics that may change throughout a songs entire duration, and possibly even some graphics designed to span a series of screens, perhaps to accompany a live performance.

I’ve always been interested in combining my love of music, performance, visual art and animation, and I feel like this is a great opportunity to do so.