Kodak Campus Beat - January 2003 Philly Metro - January 16, 2003 Kodak Campus Beat - January 2003 University of the Arts (UArts) - location: Philadelphia, PA.          Sean McBride switched his major in college to pursue his dreams and ended up pursuing other people's dreams ­ literally. His senior thesis film from University of the Arts is called Dreamscapes and portrays his visual interpretation of other peoplešs dreams. "I've always considered dreams to be a rife source of inspiration for just about any medium. It's certainly not an original idea to use dreams as material for a piece of artwork, but I decided to attack from the angle of exploring the different ways in which people perceive their dreams," said Sean. "I interviewed 20 people for their dreams and edited it down to about 8 dreams that I wove together. For each dream I developed a different visual style, and then wove those different environments into one continuous landscape."          Sean used Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Softimage 3D and Macromedia Flash to digitally paint the dreams. He also did the sound effects and music and used the recorded voices from the interviews with the people recalling their dreams. Then he transferred it to 16mm with an optical stereo soundtrack at Magno Sound & Video in New York. The whole project took 600 hours over 6 months to complete. Dreamscapes will be playing in the Animation Spotlight program at the Sundance Film Festival.          His junior thesis was a hand-drawn short film called That Special Monkey which received a Student Academy Award and a College Television Award in 2001. "It was about a guy named Steve who thought he was a dragon who was in search of the perfect girl who thought she was a monkey," he explained. "It's a whimsical, beat-driven animation in which the line between people and animals get blurred."          He is currently working on producing a sci-fi short animation that was written and designed by children. He described it as "What if a 5-year-old made Star Wars?" "When I was a kid, I would draw flipbooks and doodles in class, but I had never considered it as a profession," Sean recalled. "I thought professional artists had to be really serious and make weird sculptures out of carpets and things. I just wanted to draw."          "I didn't even know I wanted to do animation until the year before I transferred to Uarts," he added. "I was majoring in Computer Science, and one night I was doing some Statistics homework that was incredibly hard, and there was a group of us laboring on it for hours. It didn't make any sense at all, and it was that night that I had an epiphany and decided I wanted to be an animator. I told everyone bye, I'm switching majors and never went back to that class. I like computers, but I'm glad I changed, animation is way more fun."          Sean graduated last May with a BFA in Animation . His advice for other animation students is "Don't just do what's required of you, every project you do, make it the best you can. You'll be glad you did later." -Derek Home Philly Metro - January 16, 2003 Philly grad's animation makes it to Sundance M. Night Shyamalan suddenly has some company as one of Philadelphia's great additions to the art of motion pictures.          Although he excels in a different genre of film, Sean McBride makes his national debut with his animated short, "Dreamscapes," at this year's Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.          Originally written as McBride's senior thesis, "Dreamscapes," is a six-minute color animated short woven from vignettes based on the dreams of McBride's friends and family, each segment of which is animated in a different style.          The festival, held today through Jan. 25, will feature 90 shorts along with McBride's, only a handful of which are animated. Having graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia less than a year ago, McBride was surprised to have his movie selected from the more than 3,000 submissions.          Although this is not McBride's first major showing or award (in 2001 McBride was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 28th annual Student Academy Awards) he does think it is one of the greatest.          For McBride the road to Sundance was not easy. His six-minute movie was created through 500 hours of hard work, over five months, drawing on his computer along with countless hours interviewing friends and family.          McBride felt it was all worth it, for him animation is a voice, a way to express his vision.          "It's kind of like making a movie, but you can do anything you want. If you do animation, you can do it the way you want," he explains.          The silver screen is not where McBride wishes to stay, though. While the Sundance Film Festival is as McBride explains, "really exciting and a great place to meet people and find the people who you need to stay in touch with," it is not the exact direction he wants to see his career move in.          Cartoon Network's animation studios are more up his alley. McBride, who currently lives in Blue Bell, hopes to start his career in an animation studio working on narrative-based cartoons. His favorite is the "Power Puff Girls." Until then, McBride will continue to create and draw in his free time while working as an online designer. -Moira Cochran