Dan Tranfaglia

2021 Senior Exhibition Artists

Dan Tranfaglia

Art + Design: Animation + Game Arts

About Dan Tranfaglia

My name is Daniel Tranfaglia and I am an Animation/Game Arts major, here at UMass Dartmouth. I took on the animation field after having been inspired to do so by Seth MacFarlane, the creator of animated TV sitcoms such as: Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show. However, over my past few years as a UMassD undergrad, I realized that becoming an animator myself is not main life goal, after all. Ever since my middle school career, I dreamt of one day creating an animated series of my own. At first, the genre was intended to be a plain sitcom as a way of following my inspiration’s footsteps. But, after having developed a newfound liking to anime over the last year or two, I came to the conclusion of applying an action/adventure theme to it in addition to comedy. I have spent years coming up with new ideas to push this story of mine to new heights. The title of my potential franchise is titled, “Raytona”; a name that came to mind upon hatching the idea of combining the first and last name of the titular character, Rago Daytona. Although, there is still much work left to get done, I love and embrace a journey like this unlike any other. Furthermore, I have recently gained a passion for doing voiceovers, and hope to become a voice actor at Funimation Studio in the meantime, as well as tackle a role or few in my series, if all goes as planned.

Statement

My project is an animation/storyboard piece. The plot revolves around me taking the dreaded final exam in a high school environment. Me and my classmates are given an hour time limit to complete the essay, and as the session progresses, you will notice that I am the only person in the class hesitant to put pen on paper, so to speak. The test is proctored by an unnamed female teacher. Whether I pass or fail; stay tuned. While there is no present dialogue, the storyboard is guided via music tracks and sound effects. As I am sure you can tell, the art style I incorporated into this has an anime/manga-like influence. The idea behind my project came to light from a YouTube comment that read “When you take your final exam” which was posted to an audio track I chose to feature in the film. The creative process to this allowed me to use some of my most profound skills as an artist such as, drawing, video-making, soundtrack editing, etc. This was certainly a difficult and time-consuming task to perform, though I very much enjoyed it, before all else.