Digital Collections Willamette University
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Jade Laidlaw 2025
No full textA Guide to Floramagy will be a game following the plant witch Sorrel and her animal companion, Walnut. For Jade’s project, she has decided to do a lot of the preproduction work, and has done work relating to creating concept art and animations, exploring possible narrative themes, testing gameplay mechanics, and researching how to create a game with an accessible design approach
Audrey Shuman 2025
No full textFor my thesis project I created a 48 page self-ended picture book dummy about a shepherdess who turns into a werewolf, as a metaphor for medical trauma. Her journey is about self-acceptance and about the difficult emotions that arise from developing a chronic illness at a young age. The story talks about a lot of difficult emotions, but the overall message is about leaning on friends and family for support and that even if you have a chronic illness, it doesn’t mean you’re broken.
The core idea of my project is to tell the story of a girl who is a shepherdess in a fantasy world. She spends her days tending to her flock and is very dedicated to her task.
But one night she starts hearing howling and it keeps happening night after night. On the third night she goes out to investigate because it keeps scaring the sheep. She wanders into the night and is bitten by a werewolf, she is scared and confused and runs home to her parents.
Her parents are upset but they accept her and comfort her, but she is in denial about it and acts like everything is normal. But her body starts changing and it makes it harder to do her job, eventually she reaches a breaking point and runs away from home.
Her family chase after her, when they find her, she tells them to go away but they stay and talk through things with her. They talk to her about how things won’t be easy but that she can work through them and still achieve her goals. And that things are harder, but she is not broken or wrong, just different. In this way my story will be a metaphor for what it’s like to have a chronic illness
Robin Winwood 2025
No full textMy project, titled “Philip’s Monster,” is a 40 page separate ended picture book about Philip the mouse, and the monster that follows him throughout his everyday life. The book explores themes of platonic intimacy and the comfort of home, as well as trauma, emotional sensitivity and mental illness. The book is memoir-esque in that Philip’s experience is a direct parallel to my own. The book is largely a reflection of my complicated and difficult feelings around the friendships and losses I experienced as a homeschooled, autistic adolescent growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Philip’s Monster is a retrospective project for me, which gave me space to look back on my childhood, while also serving as a stepping stone into my adult life. Going forward, I plan to pitch this book dummy to publishers and agencies, while using it as a portfolio piece in the meantime
Sarah Rae Franklin 2025
No full textThe film is a 2D animated short with a runtime of approximately six minutes. It aims to investigate the following question: How can I harness the connection between lived experience and nature to create a new narrative about suicide? The story follows Lump, a reclusive 20-something, trying to enjoy her fragile life with her lone friend in the city. What little stability she has is shattered when her past finally catches up to her, and she throws up a salmon in a dingy bar bathroom. To thrive, she must decide if she can embrace vulnerability and open up not only to herself but to those who wish to help her. This film explores the difficult experience of living after a suicide attempt, from the remembrance of the trauma to the terrifying ordeal of letting people in. It studies these ideas by using the symbolism of the salmon, and the surrealism of becoming one with it as a lens to understand the cycle of life in the face of suicide
Annika Rausch 2025
No full textWith my series of intaglio prints, I explore themes relating to identity construction and place, arguing that those residents who think of themselves as “Portlanders” should instead shift their primary allegiance to the Willamette River. My thesis work contributes to this project of identity reformation by building an affective-aesthetic matrix of imagery, recalling viewers
back to local land and water forms, the reality of political violence, and the larger cosmos. My work includes references to the often-suppressed Indigenous materiality of this place, recognized as a fact of the social environment that demands reckoning, plus imagery from the distant past of my own European ancestry, as well as “composted” charts and diagrams from scientific research. By “composting,” I mean erasing the legibility of a graphic or making it esoteric, in order to remove it from rigidly emotionless systems of information-and-control. The main text of my thesis takes the form of a glossary, meant to aid in “reading” the visual work
Cassie Tompkins 2025
No full textBioregionalism, whose principles were conveyed by the environmentalist Peter Berg in the 1970s (and are widely present in indigenous land practices) is an awareness of both the diverse life-forms of a place and how they are interrelated, including with humans. Bioregionalist thought not only encompasses practices like habitat restoration and regenerative agriculture, it has cultural elements. It asks us to identify as citizens of the bioregion as much as the state, meaning not only having a familiarity with the local ecology but maintaining a commitment to stewarding it together. This essay uses bioregionalism or ‘placefulness’ as a framework to examine my own multidisciplinary practice and that of contemporary artists who utilize tenets of the philosophy to sustain, memorialize, and empathize with a place and its people
Mya Katz 2025
No full textNevermoore is an 11-minute animatic pilot episode for an animated series about a group of teenagers that stumble onto a portal to another world. Here, they deal with their various dramas, traumas, and relationships, both platonic and romantic. Or more simply, it’s Heathers meets Narnia.
This pilot episode is about Quinn, becoming increasingly frustrated after continuously failing in her heroic quests. After some goading from a rival, she’s determined to finally capture a Goblin. Will a little help from an unlikely ally finally be what Quinn needs to become a hero?
Nevermoore is intended for teen to young adult audiences. It features violence, swearing, and darker themes of trauma, abuse, neglect, escapism, harm, and cult mentality. The show is also aimed toward queer audiences, and most of the primary characters are young sapphic girls.
The animatic is made digitally, primarily in the program TVPaint. Layouts are made in Adobe Photoshop and Procreate. Additional editing is done in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Nevermoore takes a lot of inspiration from Narnia, with characters from the ‘modern’ world going to a fantasy world. It also takes inspiration from Heathers, with high school bullying going too far. It explores the concept of the revenge fantasy genre, with ‘fantasy’ being a little more literal.
Nevermoore exists as an animatic as my goal is to enter the industry through storyboarding and I’d like to have a clean project to put into my portfolio for future employers. However, I do plan on fully completing the pilot after graduation. With so many recent successes in the indie animation industry, I’d like to pursue this project as another potential way into the industry
Izzy Duval 2025
No full text2D animated tale of compounding misfortune, a burnout and the parasitic shark attached to his head chase a streetcat through a city. Chaos ensues
Caroline MacLean 2025
Full text linkRoots and Tides is a love letter to the people who ground me. It explores relationships, identity, and the ways we express care, specifically through music and design. I’ve always made playlists for people I love. It’s one of the ways I show up. This project is a larger, more intentional extension of that.
Each album cover is inspired by a person in my life. Some are family, some friends, and some chosen family. I interviewed each of them, curated a short playlist based on our conversations and our connection, and created a visual language around their energy and aura. Each cover is unique to the individual but designed to exist as part of a collective whole, like a record collection.
The name Roots and Tides reflects how these people shape me. Roots keep me steady; tides represent change, movement, and emotional currents. Both are necessary.
This project was originally going to include a bound book and custom record case, but I scaled back due to time and resources. Still, I’m proud of what I completed: seven album covers and a gallery space that feels like an extension of my world. Many of the objects in the space are from my own home or my family’s.
This process pushed me to play multiple roles: designer, art director, curator, and collaborator. It challenged my time management, decision-making, and ability to synthesize personal and visual storytelling. Ultimately, it’s about the people I love and the language I use to say so
Blitz the Bearcat at the Stadium
No full textBlitz the Bearcat, Willamette University’s mascot, stands on the football field with arms raised. McCulloch stadium is visible in the background