Emma Sewell 2025

Abstract

My Animated Arts thesis project, “Tombmates”, is an approximately four-minute animatic video that explores the intersections between monstrosity, neurodivergent relationships, and queer identity. I will present this video on a projected board up in the dark space of room 611, where the room is lightly decorated to hearken back to the apartment this story is mainly set in. The animatic is influenced by my own neurodivergent genderqueer background and my lifelong fascination with playfully or humorously dark works. The project is a fiction narrative centered around Thea, a young woman with ADHD who lost her apartment complex in a fire recently and is eager to create a friendship with her brand new trial-run roommate Simone, an autistic nonbinary figure who is actively trying to blend in with the local human population. Through a timed sequence of digital illustrations, I seek to convey the comedic, energetic, and empathetic tone of Tombmates’ premise. In a turbulent time where queer and neurodivergent people both once again find themselves targets for ostracization, I create in the spirit of Maurice Stevens a narrative that features these characters as “vindicated whole beings who possess the stuff of historical merit-will, self-awareness, culture, humanity, and so on”. My initial inquiries for my research were the following: What role have monsters played in our history, and what does the rising sympathy for monstrous creatures reveal about contemporary culture? In addition, how do neurodivergent people present themselves and connect to other people? I had some academic and personal knowledge on both questions, but I wanted to dig deeper than I had before. This led me down a rabbit hole of research on the Gothically queer through Laura Westengard’s Gothic Queer Culture: Marginalized Communities and the Ghosts of Insidious Trauma, queerplatonic relationships through the thesis “Queer Platonic Intimacy as Transformative Disruption” by Emma E. Allen-Landwehr, and even what makes an ideal dynamic for Muppets through Dahlia Lithwick’s proposed Muppet Theory article. My visual influences for this project are also consistent in theme, including Marc Davis’s humour with Haunted Mansion’s Stretching Portraits scene, Lisa Hanawalt’s exuberant characters in the animated series Tuca and Bertie, and Martin Hsu’s spooky optimism in his Ruby Gloom animated show. My creative practice as a storyboard artist will send me straight into the scene of commercial animation, so I felt it was appropriate to study the commercial artists that continue to inspire me. Over the past four months, I have used Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro to create this work, operating digitally on both the school-accessible Cintiq table and home Lenovo laptop. Initially, I proposed this project would implement three passes of drawings and 100 hours of labor; due to time constraints, two passes of drawings were completed and I worked for around the time I predicted. Over this period, I directed voice actors, adjusted my visual work with feedback from my thesis mentor as well as the mid-term review panelists, and edited together a video using my own visual creations as well as the sounds of various contributors. I hope that the PNCA community will find themselves entertained by this project and relate to Thea and Simone on their quest for connection and comfort.