Coffee Break

2024 MFA in Animation Thesis Film

This short animated film follows a barista through an ordinary day at a coffee shop—complete with moments of boredom, stress, and awkwardness. It’s a humorous look at service work, drawing from real-life experiences to explore themes of labor, dignity, and the quiet absurdities of customer-facing jobs. By the end, we realize the main character is imagining the day in advance—and chooses not to take the job.

My focus for this project was telling a grounded, expressive story within a manageable scope. I designed and lit a stylized set, created animatics and storyboards, and handled all the animation myself. A lot of the personality comes through the character’s facial expressions, which I prioritized as a key storytelling tool.

The film offers a quiet refusal of exploitative norms, but it’s mostly just an honest (and hopefully funny) take on the kind of jobs so many of us know firsthand.