PRE-THESIS PROJECT 2017 MOON IN A TEACUP
A series of animated shorts based in Magic Realism STUDENT:
DEBASMITA DAS
PROJECT:
Moon In A Teacup
SPONSOR:
Self initiated
PROGRAM:
Undergraduate Professional Programme
AWARD:
Digital Media Arts
GUIDES:
Sandeep Ashwath and Satyajit Roy
Copyrights 2016-2017 Student Document Publication (for private circulation only) All Rights Reserved Pre-Thesis Project (Undergraduate Professional Programme) Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore - 560064 Karnataka No part of this document will be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, scanning, photography and video recording without written permission from the publishers namely Roshan Shakeel and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. Written, edited and designed by Debasmita Das Printed at Yelahanka, Bangalore
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND PLAGIARISM STATEMENT I, DEBASMITA DAS, hereby declare that the content of this student documentation and final design/artwork submission is my own original work and has not been plagiarised in full or part from previously published/designed/manufactured material or does not even contain substantial propositions of content which have been accepted for an award of any other degree or diploma of any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in this thesis project. I also declare that the intellectual content of this Thesis Project is my own original work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style and presentation is acknowledged and that this thesis project (or part of it) will not be submitted as assessed work in any other academic course.
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT I, DEBASMITA DAS, hereby grant Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology the right to archive and to make available my Thesis Project in whole or in part in the institute’s databank and website, and for non-commercial use in all forms of media, now and hereafter known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act.
Name: Debasmita Das Signature: Date: 16th November 2017
Phase 1 Project
Watermelt Logline – An exploration of a moment of a girl spacing out while watching the rain. Concept – This animation was supposed to be a visualization of the mental space of a girl zoning in and out of her physical surroundings, her mental trajectory stimulated by the sound of the rain. Medium – 2D Photoshop animation.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Understanding the Context - Magic Realism Our context in the project was magic realism. Magic realism is a genre of narrative fiction that emerged in Latin America where the magical is revealed in a real world setting. The binary of the supernatural and the real comes together in this genre and the writers don’t create new fantasy worlds but reveal the magical in this world. The works of many Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez are considered to fall under this literary genre where the magic or the supernatural presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting. I see this genre as a celebration of the mundane and an attempt to see the possibility of magic and intrigue and mystery in everyday narratives. It was this aspect of magic realism that I wanted to explore in my animation. It is different from Surrealism in the sense that Surrealism explores very particularly the psychological experience of the mind distanced from material reality while Magic Realism is much more grounded in that material reality.
“We are offered a new style that is thoroughly of this world that celebrates the mundane…..It employs various techniques that endow all things with a deeper meaning and reveal mysteries that always threaten the secure tranquility of simple and ingenuous things.... it is a question of representing before our eyes, in an intuitive way, the fact, the interior figure, of the exterior world.” - Franz Roh
Phase 1 Preliminary Processes We first discussed magic realism as a literary genre and its history and read two of Marquez’s stories. The second story we read was “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo” and as a group selected a section that we related to the most based on which we had to create a sound piece that gave a sense of space the action was taking place in. This is the section that we selected which explores Isabel’s thoughts and actions on Wedenesday.
Reasons for selection of passage •
Sense of space - both physical and mental.
Since our first step was to make a sound piece that created a sense of space, we decided to select this paragraph where the narrator exists in both her own musings and mental space, but can still hear and feel things in her physical surroundings. Since the writing itself reflects the existence of multiple spaces both mental and physical and show the dynamics between both, we thought it would be an interesting part to explore through sound. •
Narrator zoning in and out of her surroundings.
Another reason we thought could be interesting is the fact that the narrator constantly zones in and out of her surroundings and those shift between mental and physical space would be interesting to depict through sound.
Making the sound piece Making the sound piece involved creating some foley sounds on our own and mainly sourcing sounds from online libraries. Our challenge mainly was in layering the sound to create a sense of space and showing the shifts between mental and physical space by understanding how much sound is perceived by the narrator when she is lost in her mind. We also decided to use dialogue in a language closer to our contexts i.e Bengali.
Development of Storyboard After the sound piece was developed independent of any thought about visuals, we then embarked upon the process of finding an image/sequence of images for the sound. • Developing narrative around sound by trying to access what the sound held for us. • We started making associations with the feel of the sound and the text, and what drew us to it. • We started finding personal context to draw from, that we associated with the sound. • Selecting a particular space and memory from that context. • Building a sequence that explores that moment from that memory that is driven/directed by the sound For me, I associated the sound piece to a memory of me spacing off while watching the rain in a dingy mossy balcony in Assam and decided to make a piece on that.
Magic Realism In “Watermelt” • Process of exploring and magnifying and exaggerating the real to the extent it becomes magical. The essence of magic realism lies in its ability to reveal the magical in the mundane and these processes involved in animation make it appropriate for it. • Animation as a medium itself is magic realist I think animation as a medium itself inevitably shows of magic realism because it draws from reality but with its ability to manipulate time and its choice of what moments of reality to represent and magnify draws out the magical in the mundane. • Is it magic realism or surrealism? While I have tried to extend the context of magic realism in my piece, I realised that it perhaps blurs the boundaries between magic realism and surrealism because while it tries to bring out the magical in the mundane, it is also trying to visualize a psychological experience (like in surrealism) that however is grounded in the material reality of the character, as her escape into the dreamlike state is compelled by her surroundings.
Inspiration - Ama While we have been exposed to many artists’ works at Srishti, there have been certain student short films that have influenced my interests. Rather than narratives with a conventional gripping story arc, I gravitate towards an animation’s ability to explore a short moment in time and space and bring out the poignancy in the everyday. One student work that has inspired me is “Ama” a graduate film from Gobelins, l’École de l’image in France that takes place during the time of World War II in Japan. With its use of watercolour paintings to create a stunning backdrops and the story being a solitary silent interaction between 2 women from different cultures, the ambiguity and ingenuity of the interaction does not allow the viewer to easily understand what the story’s purpose is. This inability to easily consume the animation allows the viewer to really witness the details in the setting and the subtleties of the character and leaves them with a sense of question and wonder, which I wanted to explore in my own animation.
PRE-PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTION
Character Design
Treatment and Image Exploration My main challenges came while creating images and treatment for the animation. While I had a specific space and memory in mind that I was trying to draw from, I realized that just memory was not enough to create a strong visual. With guidance, I combined my memories of the mossy damp sheltered space with the architectural elements of old Calcutta houses to create a final image. Photoshop allowed me to explore texture and transparency in the image which was necessary for this animation in particular, since the imagery had textural elements like moss and transparent elements like water featuring predominantly.
Shutter Windows for Calcutta
Balcony Details from Old Calcutta Houses
Textural References
Reference Footage
Phase 2 Project
Nautch Kranti (made with Riya Gupte)
Logline – A collaged animation of two contrasting visual narratives of colonial India. Concept – The animation is meant to shatter the oriental image of India that was created by the British to reveal a different visual narrative of India that emerged during the freedom movement. Medium – Photoshop animation using found images of 18th and 19th century colonial India.
RESEARCHING THE CONTEXT
Preliminary Processes For this phase, we were to make an animated loop based on a haiku using found images of certain categories like 19th century photos, magazine cut-outs, botanical illustrations or indian miniature paintings. This animation was supposed to focus on the crafting of the image, its composition, detail and layering and also its symbolism. We had workshops that focused on analyzing paintings and the techniques used in their composition, creating dense layered images with maximum elements and creating narratives using manipulated images.
Haiku
Richard Wright (1908-1960), one of the early forceful and eloquent spokesmen for black Americans, author of Native Son and Black Boy, was also a poet. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, who suffered discrimination and violence in the South and the North. He got introduced to the form of haiku in the last 18 months of his life that were later published in the book “Haiku: This Other World”. “ thoughts scatter with the sound of a gun shot frightened white birds ”
Reasons for Initial Interest in Concept One of the given categories was 19th century photographs and most photographs of India from that time are a reminder of the colonial era and the oriental lens that India was viewed through. Magic realism being a postcolonial literary genre, and a voice of cultural resistance against imperalism, we thought that it would be interesting to work with the idea of colonialism. Both of us had term paper topics about magic realism and how it aids our perception of colonial history in India. With these topics, we were already engaging in discussions about how we view our own history of colonialism and photography played an important role in creating certain narratives about it.
Finding Images The most predominant images that emerged of colonial India in our initial research were those of photographers like Samuel Bourne, Bourne and Shepherd and John Burke who specialized in portrait photography of the Indian subcontinent and were commissioned by the Queen often to document the country. The pictures mostly consisted of staged portraits of nobility, scenic landscapes and monuments and ethnographic documentation.
Samuel Bourne - ‘The Gate at Husainabad, Lucknow’, India, 1865
Samuel Bourne, ‘Maharaja of Patiala and Attendants’, India, 1870s, Albumen\
Samuel Bourne “A Nautch girl with two musicians”, India (1860s). From an album of 336 photographs. (Sotheby’s)
Delhi, His Eminence, The Viceroy’s Elephant, Delhi Durbar; Bourne & Shepherd, 1877. (Courtesy MAP/Tasveer
In contrast to the Oriental images of the wealth and scenic beauty of India, we tried to find those that stood out more starkly in contrast to that idealized image the British created. We tried finding images of the freedom struggle, of famines caused by the British, pictures of corpses clicked by both British photographers and others. Most pictures of the freedom struggle came from undocumented sources.
Police charge demonstrators at the Esplanade Maidan in Bombay with lathis. The protest was organised by the National Congress Party.Â
The Hanging of two rebels, The Indian Mutiny, 1858
Women’s Protest in Bombay, 1930. Independence minded Indian women argue with police during a protest over the right to hold a meeting of the Indian National Congress on the Esplanade Maidan in Bombay
Edward Said on Orientalism
As a part of our research, we listened to Edward Said a prominent figure in understanding Orientalism “The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire.... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.�
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Concept Iteration 1 At first we wanted to create images by juxtaposing elements of British atrocities with the idealized pictures of the Orient that they had created. We wanted to show those images in a peepshow format. Reasons for rejection - However there were issues with the timeframe of the images being too vast and the idea of the peepshow not meeting the limitations of the exercise.
Concept Iteration 2 We tried being more specific with our timeframe and experimented with juxtaposing images of the Madras famine (where British policies created a large number of casualties) which happened around the same time (the 1870’s) that Samuel Bourne was doing portrait photography of nobility. The aim was to show the contrast between the abundance and wealth the Oriental image portrayed and the actual conditions of Indians who were suffering under the British rule. Reasons for rejection - This idea got ruled out too because it was more of a concept for a photography series and did not have much scope for animation in it.
Concept Iteration 3 Our final concept was of having a stable composition that encapsulates the Oriental image of India while its background tapestry shatters to reveal a visual sequence of images from the freedom struggle. The basic idea was to shatter the image that the British had created of India through their photography and reveal a different visual narrative of the country that emerged during the freedom struggle that we had created of ourselves.
Reasons For Final Concept
Issue of large timeframe resolved by theorizing that we do view the freedom struggle in a condensed timeframe the way we are taught about it. Having one stable image allowed it work better as a gif and meet the limitations of the exercise. The gunshot tied the concept back to the haiku.
Creating Narrative For The Back One of our main challenges was to decide what this alternative visual narrative of India would entail. We decided to go with protests since the energy of those dynamic images would be in contrast to the inertia of the posed portraits of Oriental India created by the British.
We also decided to go with the first image of the hanging for nserting a bit of shock value that needed to come with the shattering of the Oriental image. This image needed to show the cruelty of the British starkly to be the motivation and create an emotional reaction to drive the protests
PRODUCTION
Issues Faced • Making the back narrative smooth and not have it look like a slideshow of images. • Coping with heavy files due to image size • Finding sources for freedom struggle pictures • Animating movement of crowds for a loop
Reflection on Final Piece Our initial concept was opinionated. We wanted to shatter the orientalist image that the British had created. But our understanding of the conbut simply displaying narrative. Understanding grew through iterating. From beginning to end. Emerged issues like class boundaries, whether we were playing into orientalism with the rug.
Bibliography of Image Sources J. Paul Getty Museum Collection British Journal of Photography World History Archive at Alamy Stock Photos Tasveer Gamma Keystone Collection of Getty Images
Phase 3 Project
Suffocating Paper Awards
Logline - Bullied by peers for her academic achievements, a girl turns to an unlikely source of solace. Description - Keya, an ordinary school girl is bullied by her peers for her good marks and is suffocated by the whirlwind of expectations that come from her being an academic achiever. However she turns to her drawing class and the act of painting for solace and her art teacher’s​encouragement becomes her only form of confidence. Medium - Photoshop 2D animation.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Writing exercise with Biswameet. Our starting point for our scripts was a writing exercise with Biswameet. We were asked to pretend that we are writing an autobiography and come up with a title for the book and make the index page with chapter names. The chapters were supposed to be based on different phases of our lives and we could segregate them as we wished. The following page has the index page contents. From these we had to pick any chapter or phase, come up with 10 objects that we associate with that phase and write a short piece of 500 words that had to mandatorily include those ten objects. My piece was about my phase in school when as students we started getting marks instead of grades for the first time. By scoring high marks in all subjects, I was suddenly thrust into a world of expectation of academic success, report cards and awards which were piled onto me which didn’t serve to make me feel confident about myself because it made me a target of bullies in my classroom. The experience of being stereotyped as an academic achiever who was expected to go into IIT was suffocating and in such a time, I turned to art for comfort. It became my source of confidence because of encouragement from my drawing teacher.
“A Clickbait Series Of Banal Events – How That Nerd In Your School Survived Life” 1. That Phase When I Exhausted My Quota For Social Interaction aka Wild Child 2. How To See The Big City Through A 6 Year Old’s Eyes – Early Diaries of Mumbai 3. She Is Going To Get Into IIT – How Marks Ruined My Social Life Exam Answer Sheets with 79/80. Report Cards. Textbooks. Walking through class after getting math marks. Uniform. Blackboard. Numero Uno. Good Conduct Certificate. Art Certificates. Competition registration desks. Poster Paints. A3 Size Cartridge Sheets. Drawing Class. Crowds of Students. Front Bench. School Bus. B/W Nokia Phone. Sinhals. Vogue Magazine. High School Musical. Loser Like Me. 4. The Parallel Universe of Art 5. The Nerd Who Wanted to Be Sabyasachi 6. How To Survive Being A Social Outcast – Causes, Coping and Repercussion 7. Exit Strategy – Dar Ke Aage Social Life Hain 8. How To Burn Bras And Be Homosexual 9. Not Creative Enough Is A False Statement – Getting Into Design School 10. This Is Art – Now Do It. 11. Queer Feminist or What A Fucking Feminazi – Why Social Justice Movements Shaped My Later Life 12. Yes I Am 21. No, I Didn’t Stop Ageing At 14. 13. I Survived Srishti – Now What? 14. Death. Just Kidding. I Am Obligated To My Mother To Live.
Written Piece “She is going to get into IIT” Her knell had been sounded. She was walking back to her seat. Blackboard and beaming teacher behind her. Crowds of students in uniform gaping. She has grabbed the attention of even the first benchers who twist and look as she walks past rows of bench after bench staring at the sheets in her hand. All eyes on the 79/80 of her math exam answer sheet. She grins not having paid heed to the statement that would eventually put the final nail in the coffin that held her social life and self-worth. Crash! The coffin falls into the grave. The bell tolls. A storm is approaching. A hurricane of report cards and history and math and literature and science and hindi textbooks chase her. The wretched uniformed crowd screams “Scholar! Scholar!” in vitriolic verse and thrusts the Good Conduct Certificate behind her back through her shirt and tries strangling her with the Numero Uno medal around her neck. They use her medal as a leash and drag her right back into the storm. There is no escape. But every storm has an eye doesn’t it? Like her geography textbook said. She goes looking and with eyes closed shut, she walks and walks, battling the storm till she suddenly stumbles into…calm. She cracks her eyes open to look at the patla (low table) in front of her. There is a drawing book and paints, brushes and a palette. The hurricane rages behind her. She is in a drawing class. She looks at the other kids beside her and starts painting. With every stroke she paints, the storm behind her calms down. The picture she paint forms in front of her. The drawing teacher passes by her, bends down to look at the finished painting and smiles. “Mast che” she says as she pats her head. She smiles proudly as her back straightens up and the sun cracks through the stormy sky.
Magic Realism in Suffocating Paper Awards In order to communicate my experience and also because of our broader theme of magic realism, I used a metaphor of a hurricane which represented the chaos of academics and social ostracization, with me trying to find the center of the storm as a metaphor for trying to find a moment of solace and an escape through art. Magic realism in literature often employs metaphor and allegories like in books like Midnight’s Children that I based my term paper on. I felt that I should try to incorporate that into my story telling for the following reasons. • Using a metaphor could communicate the emotion of the experience better than simply a retelling of events. • Metaphors could translate into a better visual storytelling device especially in animation where it’s actually possible to depict them as opposed to live action. I think this is where magic realism in literature can be transmuted to animation through complex metaphors. While books like Midnight’s Children have much larger and complex metaphors that become allegories when put in a larger social and political context, my short employs a simple metaphor to represent the emotional experience, that heightens the effect of the moment of solace in the end.
Making a script out of the written piece Now came the challenge of condensing the piece to be appropriate for a 30 sec animation. During the readings it was suggested that we select a moment from our story to animate. However while trying to select a moment, I realized that none of the moments made as much sense or were that powerful in isolation. My story needed that build up of the character being demeaned and her suffocation in her circumstances for the peaceful moment of her painting to be poignant and hence I stuck to the basic flow of events and worked on simplifying the actions instead. The process of working on the script involved making multiple image sequences to be able to visualize the script and alter it accordingly. Some changes included • Adding an element of mystery by not showing her marks in the first shot itself. • Making the academic expectation burdening her more obvious by representing it as books and medals falling on her and burying her.
Image Sequence 1
Image Sequence 2
Final Script
PRE - PRODUCTION
Character Design of Keya The character of Keya is inspired by how I used to look like in school. Keya is supposed to look like a very apprehensive inhibited mundane looking adolescent school girl. Bullied by peers, her posture and expressions reflect her lack of self esteem and her posture improves upon being shown kindness or encouragement. Since the animation has numerous scenes with a multiple busy elements in one frame, I kept the facial features simple so that the movements and expression changes are more obvious and visible especially since there are no close ups of the character’s face, only long shots.
Character Design of Kirti The character of Kirti is based on my drawing teacher. She is the typical middle-aged neighbourhood drawing teacher who makes kids sit on the floor of the living room in her house during weekends and teaches them basic drawing and painting. For her character, I had to make her slightly aged features genial and kind and since she is Gujarati, my research involved watching footage of Gujarati dramas to understand how a daily-wear Gujarati sari is draped and how movement happens in it.
Backgrounds and Treatment
For the backgrounds, since this was a story based on my memory, I wanted to recreate the spaces they happened in. For reference I managed to find official pictures of classrooms in my old school Lilavatibai Podar School in Mumbai. I was not able to recreate them in minute detail as I had to keep in mind ease of animation as well, but I tried to bring out the dingy banal atmosphere of the space.
For the drawing class, since I had lost contact with my drawing teacher, I tried to recreate the space by using objects and textures that I remember in minute detail because of the years I spent in that space, like the green marble platform of the window, the design of the generic daily chatais used in households and the colors of the low tables.
This is the part of the animation that I struggled with the most, as it was difficult to make the haphazardness of color and objects present in average middle-class surroundings look aesthetic through a particular treatment while still maintaining the integrity and authencity of the space. In the Phase one project I had to appropriate a context to supplement my memory of a space but here I was determined to show my context for what it is and worked my way through backgrounds and treatment with that sentiment.
PRODUCTION
Creating The Animatic For the animatic, I decided to complete the treatment of the background for all the scenes so that I have a general idea of how the aesthetic of the film may be and my character design, though not thorough, was based more on how it could fit the aesthetic of the film and the possibility to animate it easily. Since the stature of the character was similar to mine, I recorded animation references by acting out the character’s actions myself and using that to create a few basic character movements in the scenes. Maintaining consistency in the line quality was one challenge that I had to face when shifting from drawing close ups to long shots of the character. I also realized that it was very time consuming to animate multiple elements in the hurricane scene and get them to move in a rhythm. It was also a challenge to understand which movements to hold for a longer time for the audience to register the action, and for it to highlight the emotion I was trying to communicate. I think that is one area, where improvement may be needed when going from making the animatic to the animation. Even though I used references for the character animation, I would need to be careful to exaggerate the movements for the purpose of communication. Finally the sound design was mainly done using recordings and freesound.org, where the challenge was to recreate the background interior noises that are distinctively Indian and from my context, since a lot of the material available on the internet includes ambience sounds from spaces that are very Western and not indigenous to India.
Reflective Statement This entire process of creating 3 different animations helped me learn certain things. As we explored the Magic Realism in our work, I realised animation is inherently magic realist because of its ability to play with time and its exaggeration of reality that allows us to witness the real through a different lens. It gave me a better understanding of how certain methods within genres operate to create a certain experience be it in literature or moving visuals like metaphors which work within magic realism and in animation as well. I also learnt about the nuances of adaptation from one form to another which in turn made me more aware for how the forms work in their own right. I also learnt how there can be many different starting points to create a piece of work and not necessarily every animation starts from a script. In fact, I feel that exploring different starting points like sound or a specific genre of images allows us to create more nuanced and explored work. The most important thing I have learnt is to maintain discipline in the animation production process and the value of creating informed work and having references and visual styles to guide you in the process of creation since that is the part I struggled with the most. I also realised that the animation process is not as linear as we think it is and perhaps working with that understanding can open up avenues for better exploration in my work while still maintaining that discipline. This semester has also allowed me to understand the value of contextual work and has set me on a path where I am more motivated to find stories and visuals to animate which come from the spaces I belong to, rather than aim to imitate popular narratives.
ANNEXURE PRE-THESIS PROJECT Odd Semester 2017 Seminar 1 – Reflective Statement Name: DEBASMITA DAS Program: Bachelor of Creative Arts Award: DMA Project Title: Moon in a Teacup I. OVERVIEW OF CONTEXT: - be: 1.
What is your understanding of the context (as framed by the project)? It could Conceptual/philosophical/social/political/cultural –
Our context in the project was magic realism. Magic realism is a genre of narrative fiction that emerged in Latin America where the magical is revealed in a real world setting. The binary of the supernatural and the real comes together in this genre and the writers don’t create new fantasy worlds but reveal the magical in this world. The works of many Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez are considered to fall under this literary genre. I see this genre as a celebration of the mundane and an attempt to see the possibility of magic and intrigue and mystery in everyday narratives. It is different from Surrealism in the sense that Surrealism explores very particularly the psychological experience of the mind distanced from material reality while Magic Realism is much more grounded in that material reality. II. REFLECTION ON PRACTICE: - How have you extended the context of the project in your practice: in the conceptual framework and choice of style/material/medium/technique? For the project I selected a section from the story “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo” where the narrator zones in and out of what is happening in her surroundings. I created a sound piece based on it and the narrative (which derived from my memories of a certain space) grew organically out of it. The essence of magic realism lies in its ability to reveal the magical in the mundane. Some works of magic realism also have a non-linear, cyclical style of telling stories. I think these are the two characteristics of magic realism that I have extended in my work. I think animation as a medium itself inevitably shows of magic realism because it draws from reality but with its ability to manipulate time and its choice of what moments of reality to represent and magnify draws out the magical in the mundane.
While I have tried to extend the context of magic realism in my piece, I realised that it perhaps blurs the boundaries between magic realism and surrealism because while it tries to bring out the magical in the mundane, it is also trying to visualize a psychological experience (that surrealism does) that however is grounded in the material reality of the character, as her escape into the dreamlike state is compelled by her surroundings. -
What are the skills and capabilities that you have acquired in the past?
- As an animator particularly, I have mainly developed the skills for 2D animation and stop motion. This has included learning pre-production methods like writing and visual scripting. I started learning the basics of animation on Flash and have slowly moved to animating on Photoshop because of better potential for the quality of the image. Photoshop allowed me to explore texture and transparency in the image much better (than in Flash which only allows for vectorised images) which was necessary for this animation in particular, since the imagery had textural elements like moss and transparent elements like water featuring predominantly. - Through the explorations in your project, where have you arrived and how do you propose to continue with regard to your skills and capabilities? - Through this project I have mainly learnt the discipline of making concerted effort to go through the entire process of visually scripting the animation, creating the animatic, finding the image and treatment for it and finally maintain it throughout the animation during production process. Till now a lot of my work has been contextual. Hence the way I animate adapted to the content needed and on some level, did not allow me to fully explore the pure potential of the medium as an art and a storytelling device. This project has furthered my understanding of this potential which I feel had been lacking in my work. In terms of skill, I have improved upon various areas which I had previously ignored like the image making process – finding a context or inspiration to create a nuanced treatment for the space I am trying to show. But on the whole, this project has allowed me to make use of separate skills I previously knew in combination to create a final product. - How does your choice of concept and approach to material/medium/technique relate to your individual expression? - I have as an animator decided to focus on 2D animation because I believe most strongly in its potential to convey experiences in a manner that is not direct and that is more felt and visceral than spoon-fed using a linear narrative to the audience. I am interested in this ability of animation to visualize complex human experiences that cannot be fit into clean narratives. I have particularly been interested in exploring the
visualization of someone’s mental space and convey more intangible experiences like in this case, the experience of what we call in colloquial terms “spacing out”. Here I explored the mental space of the girl and its relationship with its physical surroundings and her memories. III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS: - How to understand the differences that arise when we try to adapt the characteristics of a literary genre to film/animation? - How do I visually convey the nuances of the mental space of a character making use of the expressiveness of animation? - How do I create a sense of space in the animation through treatment of the background and use of camera angles? - How to give matte paintings in Photoshop a textural quality while imitating damp mossy surroundings? - How do I match movements in animation with sound so as to create a cohesive piece where sound is more than just a background track? IV. RESEARCH AND EXPLORATION: - What are the artists/movements/philosophies/etc. that influence/inspire/extend your work? - While we have been exposed to many artists’ works and philosophies over time at Srishti, I think there have been certain student short films that I go back to time and again, and it is that ability of those films to draw me back to it that I try to decipher that influences my work. I have always deviated from the idea of having a grand narrative or a fantastical world in animated shorts that can draw audiences in with a gripping story arc. I tend to gravitate towards an animation’s ability to explore a short moment in time and space and bring out the poignancy in the everyday. - One student work that has inspired me is “Ama” a graduate film from Gobelins, l’École de l’image in France that takes place during the time of World War II in Japan. With its use of watercolour paintings to create a stunning backdrop for the narrative and the story being a solitary silent interaction between 2 women from different cultures, the ambiguity and ingenuity of the interaction does not allow the viewer to easily understand what the story is trying to say or what its purpose is. This inability to easily consume the animation allows the viewer to really witness the details in the beauty of the setting and the subtleties of the character and leaves them with a sense of question and wonder, which I wanted to explore in my own animation especially in the context of magical realism which as a genre turns the idea of a conventional rational narrative on its head and allows us to witness and question so much more.
- What are the techniques you have explored and what kind of challenges have they presented? - My main challenges came while creating images and treatment for the animation. While I had a specific space and memory in mind that I was trying to draw from, I realized that just memory was not enough to create a strong visual. With guidance, I combined my memories of the mossy damp sheltered space with the architectural elements of old Calcutta houses to create a final image. The pan shot of the character also posed a technical challenge because I had to create reference footage using a live subject, during which I also realized that the pose of the character was anatomically impossible and hence had to alter it. - What were the exercises, experimentations, explorations and outcomes in the project so far? - We first discussed magic realism as a literary genre and its history and read two of Marquez’s stories. One story “Artificial Roses” led to an exercise in understanding the space in which action take place through an enactment exercise. After this we read “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo” and as a group selected a section that we related to the most based on which we had to create a sound piece that gave a sense of space the action was taking place in. My group selected a section where the narrator zones in and out of her surroundings as she gets lost in her mind and gets called back by the voice of her stepmother. We thought that it would be interesting to depict that shift between her physical and mental space through sound and had particular memories or personal contexts that made us relate to that state the narrator was in, in the story. Once the sound was finalized, we started formulating a storyboard around it drawing from our personal context that we could relate to the feel of the text and sound. Thus it was sound that we explored first and based on that, a narrative emerged organically. After this we made the animatic and started the production process of finding the treatment for the animation and starting to animate which involved a unique set of explorations within itself. -
How have you managed time, resources and processes?
- For the first part of the course, the structure and timetable had already been created for us so as a class, till the point of creating the animatic, we did not have to put that much thought into managing time. It was when production began that we created our own timetable. I took the first 3-4 days to create the backgrounds for my animation and figure out the treatment for it. After that I had a daily target of 4 seconds per day although I realised that consistency was not possible since some seconds required a lot more preparation and animating time than others because of more complex character movement in them. However I tackled the two compli-
cated scenes – the pan shot and the shot of her swimming away by either finding or creating my own reference footage and dedicated an entire day to each. I had to get a live subject to sit in the same position as my character and shoot her on video to create this reference footage. For the swimming shot, I found reference footage online. Since I didn’t need any resources as such other than the animation software, managing time was my only concern. V. LEARNING OUTCOMES - Finally, state what you expect to gain or learn from this project. Identify areas of growth for yourself in terms of conceptual approaches & skill sets? What are the outcomes of your project, in a tangible sense, what will be produced in the greatest detail possible? - I think the most important thing I expect to gain from this project is discipline in my practice. I also want to further my ability to critically analyse the visual material I am exposed to, so that that understanding informs my own practice and I am able to not just create but see what I can through a critical lens as well.
PRE-THESIS PROJECT 2017 MOON IN A TEACUP A series of animated shorts based in Magic Realism STUDENT:
DEBASMITA DAS
PROJECT:
Moon In A Teacup
SPONSOR:
Self initiated
PROGRAM:
Undergraduate Professional Programme
AWARD:
Digital Media Arts
Final Examination Panel COMMENTS:
Examiner 1 (name and signature): Examiner 2 (name and signature): Examiner 3 (name and signature): Date:
Academic Dean:
DEBASMITA DAS Pre-Thesis Project 2017 (Undergraduate Professional Programme) Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore - 560064 Karnataka