Ziro: Then and Now
Guided by Prof. Nina Sabnani
The Apatani civilisation has flourished for many hundreds of years with their own principles of economy and social practices, with little contact with the outside world. It is now on the verge of a paradigm shift. This is a project undertaken to understand the impact of urbanisation on the tribe: its people, its spaces and its practices. The lives of the Apatani have been documented through sketches, photographs, folklore and first hand accounts.
Thang ta – a visual ethnography
Guided by Prof. Nina Sabnani
Thang ta is a martial art form that originated in Manipur. It is one of two martial arts that originatedin India. The aim of my research was to observe and study the art from and the lifestyle of the people whopractice it. I wanted to find out the origins, the stories, and the lore behind it, to see the art formin the present time and document it in the form of sketches, photographs and videos.As an animation student it was an interesting experience to learn about the behavior of people and theway they interact with their surroundings and, more importantly, it made me more sensitive to their culture.
“Prabha” a Marathi Animation Film on problems faced by the elderly in urban India.
Guided by Prof. Nina Sabnani
This film is inspired from by the life of my mother, Prabha Kulkarni, and the problems she has faced in the past two years. Though the story is inspired by an individual’s experience, it has relevance for society in general. It focuses on the need for a dignified life for senior citizens. The one-year project was divided into pre-production and post-production stages of film-making. In the preproduction stage, I worked on the story, storyboard, character design, background style and animatic. Post production was completely devoted to the making of the film, which involved scheduling, animation and final compositing of shots along with sound. This film is a first step to create awareness about the problems of the elderly, and the project will continue even after the film is done.
Character Design for the advertisement campaign of Android One smartphones
Technologies, Gamification, Physical Computing . This project focused on design solutions to encourage people not to waste food through awareness-raising, moderate amount of aversive feedback and persuasive techniques. The effect of two interactive installations (incidental and performative) was measured on students of a university. Individual and total food waste were recorded and statistical tests performed to evaluate the solution.
Water Treatment Process- an animated explanatory video
Guided by Prof. Phani Tetali
New Media is a definitely proving to be a significant technological revolution in e-generation and its entry into the education sector redesigning the knowledge economy. Hence, being an animation student I decided to design an animated explanatory video on the subject “ Water Treatment Process“ which will involve kids to understand the topic through a fun and engaging way of learning.
Internship at Cosmic Labs, NTU, Singapore
Guided by Prof. Phani Tetali
During this 2 months internship at COSMIC, I worked as a research assistant. The programme involved game design including concept development, story development, character design and environment/asset design for a new gesture based game that is being developed. I had to come up with the premise/theme for the game (under the COSMIC project scope), design the game, design the game play , Narratives , Primary Research, Defining the problem and objectives Developing alternative concepts Concept and Story Development Game design and implementation.
“Just Another Day” a film on Women’s Safety
Guided by Prof. Shilpa Ranade
This project aims to understand the issue of women’s safety through a short animated film. The film intends to evoke a feeling of understanding and empathy towards the experiences women face in their everyday life. The story is about four friends sitting in a cafeteria discussing everyday issues faced by women. While three of them actively contribute to the topic, their fourth friend sits silent. Her mind is full of memories–memories from her own uncomfortable experiences triggered by the words in the discussion. The film speaks for a larger group through a single person.
Workshop on Gamification of Education
Guided by Prof. Uday Athavankar
A workshop on gamification of education was organized by IDC, in collaboration with the Rajya Shiksha Kendra from the Madhya Pradesh Education Board. The aim of the workshop was to address the problem of increasing dropout rates in primary schools by making education fun. To solve this problem the game of ‘Byazigar’ was developed on the concept of Simple Interest after a thorough study of the existing syllabus. It is currently a board game, with a proposal for a partially digital interface.
‘Awaaz’ a short animated film on the identity of voice
Guided by Prof. Phani Tetali
The film calls for the audience to stop and think for a moment about the importance andinfluence of human voice–often referred to as the most versatile instrument on earth, yet also the most suppressed one. Through this film I have tried to convey the thoughts of the characters who try to speak out in society. Very often they cannot raise their voice as they get restricted from doing things they want to do. It is in such conditions that we see the rise of courage and bravery, rise of someone who not only breaks the shackles of oppression for himself but also emerges as a ray of hope for others.“I raise up my voice not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard.”-Malala Yousafzai
Internship at Studio Eeksaurus Mumbai
The intention of the project was to learn the entire pipeline process of animation as followed by the industry. During the six weeks of internship I got an opportunity to work on the Google Android project and also on an in-house short animation film. This involved developing character designs, writing story script, and making concept arts.
“The Light” A Short animated film on the Indian education system
Guided by Prof. Shilpa Ranade
The film deals with the topic of mass promotion of students in Government schools under the Right To Education Act. The Act was initially put in place to encourage students to attend school, but is now seeing a major setback as students keep progressing in academics till the 8th standard without much testing. It is only after this stage–once the mandated period of the RTE is over–that they face a major setback due to an incomplete education.
The film unfolds with the story of one such boy, Shubham, who is pushed in the race of mindless rote learning and poor evaluation, which keeps promoting him till the 8th standard. Then, Shubham is hard hit with reality by his 9th standard results. It is this reality that forces him to come to terms with right and wrong and to discover his true potential at school.
Workshop on Gamification of Education
Guided by Prof. Uday Athavankar
The workshop on gamification of education was organized by IDC in collaboration with the Rajya Shiksha Kendra from the Madhya Pradesh Education Board. The intention of the workshop was to developed a language-based game for children in the first standard. A card-based game was designed to help children identify the alphabet correctly. This concept was also prototyped for a digital interface with the theme of a kid feeding his pet dog to keep him healthy.
Pre-production for the animation Film – Pila Pahad
Guided by Prof. Phani Tetali
This six-month long project was about going through the various stages of pre-production in animation film making. From concept to story, script to animatic, concept art to character design, one had to explore all aspects of animation film design. There are two aspects of the project, preproduction and production of the film. While the pre-production phase is about research and conceptualization, the production phase is about executing the concept.
The purpose of the project is to understand the significance of those sites in India that are listed as world heritage sites by UNESCO, to bring out the stories related to them, and to create an immersive visual output in new age media that would engage people and evoke curiosity. Owing to its importance in shaping the cultural and natural history of India, I took Nanda Devi National park as a case study.
The story juxtaposes two point of views, one of the villagers who consider the mountain the sacred goddess, Nanda Devi, and the other of a westerner–a mountaineer–who thinks of climbing the mountain as a feat to accomplish, and how their stories intertwine to bring out the majesty that is the Nanda Devi Mountain.
Production of short film – Pila Pahad
Guided by Prof. Phani Tetali
An animation film that revolves around bringing out the significance of the natural world heritage sites of India.
During this project I learnt the process of making an animation film: line testing, colouring and composing each shot, and then working on the music and sound of the film. I used Indian flutes for the sound environment, to create a simple pahadi and garhwali feel for the film. The foley of storm and snow were also recorded. Some sounds like those of a bus or general chatter were taken from free sound archives available online. For the narrative, I recorded a female voice artist, who becomes the identifying voice of the film.
Sound Of the City, Visualization of Street Sounds of Delhi
Guided by Prof. Ravi Poovaiah
‘Sound of the city’ is a sound mapping experiment that revolves around identifying, collecting and visually interpreting significant sounds of any city in India. Sounds that characterize a city and help a listener identify the specific sound information that makes a city’s aural environment. I picked New Delhi for this project–the nation’s capital, of course, but also a place where I spent 8 years studying and working. The city is close to my heart, and I decided to collect and document the sounds I had forgotten once I moved to Bombay. I retraced my way through to places I had visited. Instead of tourist spots, and the Government of India’s peculiar prominence, I dwelt on the everyday life of a Delhi-ite. The urban villages and Thursday markets, places of worship and modern commutes—I tried to collect the sounds of everyday Delhi and interpret them into a series of place-based gif animations.
Kaakkapponnu (The pseudo gold)
Guided by Prof. Sumant Rao
I read Jataka Tales as a part of my Teaching Assistantship. For my final project, I thought I would retell a Jataka Tale in a Kerala context (where I’m from). I have chosen a Jataka Tale which talks about ‘Suvarnahansa’ (The Swan with Golden Feathers). The story is about human greed. Most of the stories which deal with this topic end in a tragic manner. So, when I was making a story around this concept, the challenging part was to make story on greed that still had a positive ending.
As an animator, I also wanted to try some new style of animation for this movie. ‘TV paint’ software allowed me to achieve its particular look. Finishing the movie on time was very important for me. I planned my schedule as accurately as possible, and could finish my animations 4 days before the Jury! This helped the musician/sound recordist to get an overview of the movie before starting work on music and sound.
Pre-production for short film based upon Man-Animal conflict
Guided by Prof. Sumant Rao
This project involved understanding all the pre-production work required for the development of a short film–The Brush. It included research on the topic, coming up with story ideas, developing stories, selecting an appropriate story, and writing a script based on it. Character designs, concept art, environmental explorations, model sheets and storyboards were also a part of it. The project concluded with a developed Animatic complete with scratch track.
Production of short film – The Brush
Guided by Prof. Sumant Rao
This project involved the production of the short film, The Brush, taking it forward from the Animaticstage at which it was at the end of project 2.
The Brush is a story of a boy who discovers that innocent animals are dying somewhere for his passion.
The project included scheduling, research on traditional animation techniques, layouts,animation, recording soundtrack and compositing.
