Name: Gokul C J

Guide: Prof. Sumant Rao

Course: Animation and Film Making

Credits: Professors-Animation@IDC, Autodesk Maya, Blender, Adobe Photoshop, Aftereffects and Premiere

Beyond: Exploring Sci-Fi

Science Fiction has fascinated me from my childhood . I was keen on working on the topic “Exploring Sci-Fi” for my P2-P3. This project was an attempt to go deeper into an interesting scientific curiosity that has puzzled scientists for years, the “Wow!” signals. The objective was to create a 3D animated science fiction movie that tries to give a possible explanation to the mysterious Wow! Signals, which were detected in 1977.
Synopsis: The story follows the life of Jay, an aspiring cosmologist, who follows the footsteps of his father in finding the source of the Wow! Signals. But what he discovers is anything but normal.

“PRE-PRODUCTION

The birth of the short film happened in this stage. From ideation, concept creation to script and storyboarding, all the way till animatics were carried out during the Pre-production stage.
The mind maps helped in connecting the dots to develop a story. The storyboarding gave the process, a foundation. The mood boards enabled to visualize the visual theme of the movie. Finally, the animatics, storyboard in time, helped in setting the story in motion.”

“PRODUCTION

Production involves bringing the story to life. The character modeling, rigging, creation of props and sets, etc. comes in this stage of the filmmaking process. Acting out a scene is done prior to animating as it helps in timing the shots. Modeling and rigging is done in Blender and Maya. Different facial expressions are brought about by using Blendshapes. Lip sync is done by manually manipulating the blendshapes. Once animated, the final look and feel is set during the post production phase.”

“POST-PRODUCTION

Post-Production includes colour correction, compositing, adding and mixing of final audio segments, dialogues and foley sounds and giving the movie its final look and feel. It also involves the process of adding VFX. “