Kseniya Yermakova
Reunion
Reunion is an animated video consisting of hand-drawn digital paintings that tell the story of two friends, Artur and Runa, who face each other on the evening before battle as enemies. Though blinded by their hatred of one another, they cannot help but think back to their past experiences together as friends.
Artist/Thesis Statement
When I was younger, all I ever wanted to do was write and draw my stories. It helped me deal with personal struggles of identity and sympathy as I grew up. Whenever I felt depressed, these stories became an outlet for me to properly experience emotions, both negative and positive, to grow as a person. This passion for creating meaningful and emotional experiences in my work led me to major in Art and Design. Even now, art is a form of escapism that helps me deal with existential dread and complete emptiness.
Emotions in art are such powerful pieces of our culture, and I think it is important to experience it fully or sympathize with various emotional experiences to know what it’s genuinely like to be human. Although the story of “Reunion” is set in a fantasy world, it still holds relatable feelings of loss and nostalgia. I wanted to tell a story that no matter how often characters reminisce about their past, things will never be the same between those who have already lost their faith in each other long ago.
My animated film Reunion is digitally illustrated in Adobe Photoshop and animated in Adobe After Effects. I was inspired by animatic trailers from the game “World of Warcraft”, and the trailers had me very invested. They demonstrated that powerful stories can be told without elaborate animation. Because of that, I decided to have the frames of my story made into full digital paintings, where each can be seen as their own individual works of art. The frames come together with the sound design, embodying a story of pain and broken friendships.
