This post was updated May 1 at 8:39 p.m.

Waverly Wang throws herself into every eight count of her animated short film.

Wang, a graduate student with a master of fine arts degree in animation, is preparing to take center stage at the Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival on May 10 with her animated short, “Party Boy.” Centered on a performance of the Christmas ballet, “The Nutcracker,” the story follows a young boy who, in the throes of anxiety, uses familial love to gather his courage and step into the spotlight. Having fully realized the film from the storyboard to the animation to even the musical score, Wang said “Party Boy” illustrates the important role animation has in creating resonant, emotional spaces for young audiences.

“In animation, you can be more subjective. You can go into people’s heads. You can really exaggerate what emotions feel like and make visual metaphors very easily,” Wang said. “Of course, it doesn’t look like real life, but for some reason, it’s more emotional because it’s showing an impression of how you feel inside.”

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Continuing a trend from her previous animated projects, Wang said she takes inspiration from her experiences with mental health and uses those emotions to build a story and characters. With “Party Boy” specifically, she said she took cues from when she would perform “The Nutcracker” with her sister when they were kids. In those nerve-wracking moments when the house lights dimmed and the curtain was called, Wang said her siblings became a major source of emotional support, since they were able to more directly understand what she was going through.

After watching this particular ballet again as an adult during her first year of graduate school, Wang said she came to the storyboard of her first-year film knowing she wanted to make a story that normalized anxiety and drew special attention to the sibling bond that helped her overcome these meltdowns. Her anxiety not only defined the theme of her film but also heavily informed and changed her creative process, Wang said.

“The film that I’m making to help people with anxiety is giving me anxiety right now,” Wang said. “I had to really step back and be like, ‘I’m not saving the rainforest, I’m just making animation for fun.’ I learned a lot about emotional regulation during production.”

Because Wang said she resents drawing backgrounds and was faced with quick deadlines on this project, she took inspiration from a favorite childhood book, “Knuffle Bunny,” to speed up production. Wang described the art style in this series as “collage art” that features cartoon, two-dimensional characters drawn into photorealistic backgrounds. As such, Wang said she took photos and paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public online database to not only expedite production but also stylize her finished product with the incorporation of real world locations.

Another prevalent stylistic decision that went into crafting “Party Boy” was the choice to convey its emotional beats through a musical score as opposed to more conventional dialogue, Wang said. Having made more dialogue-driven films in the past, Wang said when it comes to animation specifically, the usage of music to relay emotion takes better advantage of this more expressive medium. In addition, Wang said the nonverbal narrative allows “Party Boy” to transcend language barriers and have its message be enjoyed on a global scale. To further crescendo the music’s emotional importance in the film, Wang was violinist on the score composed by the Herb Alpert School of Music’s very own doctoral student Sergey Nesterov. By performing the literal beating heart of her film, Wang said she was able to experience the visceral narrative along with the characters.

“It’s really great because I had actual visuals that go with it instead of imagining in my head,” Wang said. “If there’s a more intense part, I know what’s happening in the story, so I try to push those emotions in.”

Wang’s musicality not only allowed her to further enhance the emotionality of her work, but it also made “Party Boy” a more cohesive end product, said her professor and area head of UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s animation program, Chuck Sheetz. Since animation is such a rhythmic procedure, Sheetz said musicians have a natural, internal metronome that gives them greater insight on the production’s pacing dynamics.

Sheetz said Wang’s film had a positive reception among her fellow students, in part due to its universal themes – attributes that make it a powerful inclusion at the LA International Children’s Film Festival. One of such reactions was from third-year animation MFA student, Athena Green, who said “Party Boy” reminded her to not give up. Wang said she sees children’s media, especially in animation, as important teaching moments to promote emotional well-being that can often be overlooked.

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This belief found its way into every creative decision that went into crafting “Party Boy” and demonstrates the reasons why Wang said animation is as powerful of a medium as it is.

“The animation can be very powerful to evoke what you feel on the inside,” Wang said. “Whenever you’re in animation, … your emotions are very clear. I feel like a lot of people can relate to … a cartoon character. Maybe when a character is 2D, you can see yourself in them a little more.”