Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

Aleksandra Z Koleva 

 
BA [Hons] Animation

Hi, my name's Aleks and I'm an animator, visual designer and background artist. I have a 10+ year background in pencil drawing and oil painting. Along with that, I'm experienced in comics and illustration. I want to work on projects for animation and video games, as my work involves focusing on the design, colour and story aspects.

"The Mechanical Circus"

An entirely hand-drawn and painted piece, from animation to colour, I present you with "The Mechanical Circus". This film is a little glimpse into a magical place with animals built out of scrap metal, gears and cogs, as well as an abundance of other elements around the circus grounds. All of this is based inside the fictional world I created years ago, elaborating on it for a project in Second Year. The idea that all this was being explored through two characters, accompanied by an orchestra playing Danse Macabre, came into my head about 3 years ago and so, as a Final Year Film, we get to see a small part of what the two stumble upon behind the curtains.



The Anvils On Which We Forge Our Fullmetal Hearts

In my thesis, I wanted to look into a select few characters from the series Fullmetal Alchemist and explore how their humanity informs their actions. Those actions are what their arcs throughout the story consist of and can be comparable to other characters in fictional works like The Book Thief or Mistborn. Ultimately, it was to see what made these select people human and what was important to them, and how we as humankind have told stories like theirs for a long time.