Overgrowth
My thesis is a portfolio of backgrounds, including both backgrounds for other students’ thesis films and games as well as a set of works establishing and creating my own world. The film and game backgrounds were completed for Hitched, LIMBO, Hasta la Raíz, and Killer Work covering a range of environments from a small western town, a dying mall, several city and desert environments across the Americas, and a few shoddy apartments. The remaining backgrounds depict a world I created; a post-apocalyptic city overrun with mutated plant life, leaving an abandoned world for a twisted nature to reclaim. The architecture and plants are loosely based on Northeastern European cities and invasive or parasitic plant species. Due to the fact that I had never created a full city, I wanted to push myself to do something large scale but manageable, so the environments are vaguely set in a specific region as opposed to being worldwide. These pieces serve to show very diverse styles, subjects, and levels of complexity, displaying my range as an artist and my ability to create environments collaboratively and individually.
Bio
Paisley Silveira is a Massachusetts-based animator and background designer, graduating with their BFA from Maine College of Art & Design this spring. They have experience in nearly every aspect of the animation pipeline from concepting to storyboarding to clean up, with a current focus on background design. For their own thesis they are focusing on creating backgrounds for a floral dystopia and have completed backgrounds for others thesis projects as well, ranging in styles and subjects from ancient Latin American civilizations to dying malls. Silveira will continue pursuing background design after graduation and continue collaborating on whatever projects come their way.
