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Acknowledgement First and foremost I would like to thank Mr. Dhiman Sengupta for his mentorship and for drawing from his bottomless well of patience during the course of this project. His feedback and his deftly chosen words of encouragement towards this film have been invaluable to say the least. The Institute and the faculty and staff within it have provided me with an environment in which obsessive growth was the only option. As many of my peers would agree, NID has become a second home. I can say that without controversy. I would like to thank my batch-mates and everyone else I have had the pleasure of getting acquainted with over the years. Many thanks to Antara Jha, Hrishikesh Kogje, Aashay Meshram, Ninad Adawadkar, Shailendra Singh Jadeja, Hena Najeeb, Aadarsh Rajan, Aishwarya Ganeshan, Jyothi Iyer, Sahitya Rani, Nikunj Patel, Rahul Agarwal and Upamanyu Bhattacharya for their companionship throughout the years. These are people I would gladly laugh my way to the end of the world with. Some of these people have lent me their own diploma documents for reference, filled with beautiful words and pictures, tempting me dangerously close to plagiarism. No doubt I shall continue to avail their services as on-demand inspiration and support for many years to come. I would also like to thank Satyajeet Prabhu for composing the score for this film.
helped me overcome more obstacles within and without the realm of this project than I care to count. She glued me to my chair and commitments when I would rather pace round-and-round my room and give up on things. I would also like to thank her for keeping me within reasonable bounds of personal hygiene and making sure I dressed better. There have been months when this project has seemed ruthlessly Sisyphean. I learnt the hard way the truth behind the adage “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, or sends you to therapy.” A documentation of this project would not be complete or honest without mentioning Dr. Rangarajan’s and Dr. Ravi Samuel’s efforts in rehabilitating me to a working condition. Lastly, I am so very grateful to my father and my mother for all their love and having given me the independence to pursue my own interests as opposed to, you know, engineering. I am sure they must have received many a word of warning from concerned relatives when I was out of earshot. My parents along with my brother, Bharat have given me all kinds of support, more than I could ask for and more than I could repay. Bharat currently leads a stellar life in California, USA, trekking, hiking, kayaking and travelling, in essence doing everything that I love and it is all I can do to be jealous of him. I would like to assure him that it won’t be long before he is joined by me in these adventures around the world.
I would like to thank Ketki for existing. I have grown enormously as a person in her company. She has National Institute of Design | GDPD 2010 | xi
Contents Originality statement vi
Copyright statement
About this project
Synopsis 6
2
vii
Acknowledgement
Initial storyboard
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8
Evolution of the story The diagnosis Visualizing the project anew
Budget, project guide Timeline The spark
Final screenplay 22
Animatic 28
Visual references 34
Treatment and style 42 development
Environment design 50
Character design 66
Colour palette
Bear (as an adult), bear (as a cub), the bird, kid, the kid’s mother, Ice cream man Identity crisis
Lighting
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Production design and animation
76
Compositing and rendering
88
Sound design
92
References and bibliography
111
Avian, ursine, humanoid About the production pipeline
Film stills
96
In retrospect
108
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About this project Anyone who has visited a zoo must have witnessed animals within their cages pacing back and forth. It only takes us a couple of minutes before we tire of the sight and move on to what is offered next. Some people pause and remark about the lives of these creatures we pay money to see. “How sad” we say to each other between our moments of excitement. That moment of poignancy quickly passes and we move on and repeat the ritual with the next animal we confront. The sadness is sacrificed at the altar of entertainment. Let’s not lie. We as a collective might obfuscate. It’s for the sake of “education” we might have heard. “Awareness”, yes, that is what this is for. That is why these creatures must be imprisoned in these cold, concrete boxes. The illusion of co-existence with nature demands these living martyrs. It is important, I submit to you, that we remember the moment of poignancy in order for humanity to progress. This film aims to let that moment linger just a little bit longer. A healthy civilization is that which lives and lets live.
I have long had a love for animals and seeing any creature suffer always twisted my heartstrings in the most cruel way. So it has only been a matter of course to be disillusioned by how society treats its animals. Thank you for visiting, at its core, is about encroachment. The sphere of human development which grows and grows only to eclipse the spheres of the animal and the plant kingdom. The incompatibility between these spheres is far from benign. There are signs everyday of the price of our development and progress, our lack of restraint and our hunger for excesses. We are quick to ignore these signs and to dismiss anyone who doesn’t as alarmists. I have chosen to tell the story of this incompatibility through the life of a bear but it could be any other “exhibit” within the zoo. All of their stories would have a similar vein running at their core, that of alienation.
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Budget Living Expenses Sound Design & Music Diploma Document Contribution to NID
Rs.21,000/Rs.23,000/Rs.4,500/Rs.5,000/-
Grand Total
Rs.53,500/-
Project Guide Dhiman Sengupta Coordinator, Animation Film Design Faculty of Communication Design National Institute of Design Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380007 Email: dhiman_s@nid.edu
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Timeline The below timeline focuses on the production and the post-production stages of the project although the pre-production process spanned a lot longer. This is for reasons which will be made clear a few pages into this document.
October 2015
November 2015
December 2015
January 2016
February 2016
Screenplay Treatment and style Environment design Character design Animation Post-production Documentation
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The spark The spark for this story came when I came upon an article on the internet. It was a story in the BBC UK website. It told the story of a bear named Juan who had managed to escape his enclosure at the Berlin zoo. He had paddled across a moat using a broken log as a raft. Having escaped thus he headed for the children’s playground. All of the visitors were evacuated and no one was hurt. The officials managed to corner and tranquilize him in just under an hour and they carried the 110 kg creature back to the exhibit. Before the zoo keepers could arrive, amateur photographers captured Juan in their own way (picture to the right), roaming the playground and of all things, investigating a bicycle. Perhaps Juan would have commandeered the bicycle had he been left alone. That is a thing for our imagination.
A left alone bicycle finds itself the object of Juan’s curiosity.
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Synopsis This film follows the story of a bear from his childhood to adulthood. As a cub he follows his mother around the woods, imitating her behaviour. The young ones in any species are curious creatures. This cub is no exception as he learns to wield his instincts. But come adulthood, he finds himself in a zoo where the days are mundane. His learned instincts prove to be dull instruments, out of place in this new environment. At such a time in his life he harkens back to the days of his childhood when together with his mother they bore witness to a slow invasion. Civilization was creeping upon their home and they found themselves helpless within its grasp. The humdrum of life comes to a halt one day when fate offers an escape. A tree within the enclosure had fallen over bridging the moat that held him captive. A bear lives its life swayed by its surroundings. The bear is guided once again by his instincts to cross the bridge and onto the other side.
While he had been rotting in his exhibit the world had moved on. The woods were no more and the invasion he remembered was complete. He stood in the midst of a city with nothing but concrete and steel for miles around. The incompatibility between his existence and the bustle of the city becomes glaringly obvious. In this moment of chaos he realizes returning the way he came is the only way he can retain any semblance of a home. Overwhelmed by noise and memories he rushes back into the zoo, under a sign which ironically reads “Thank you for visiting”. His stay is anything but temporary and his bondage is his home. The narrative is non-linear and experimental in its approach. It flits back and forth between events of the past, in a forest, and the present, in a zoo. I have attempted to weave the two timelines in a manner such that they “finish each other’s sentences”.
Wandering the zoo, the bear comes upon a bicycle. An old curiosity had been rekindled with this new found freedom. When he finally makes it out of the gates of the zoo, reality stops him in his tracks. He gazes at the strange sight before him. National Institute of Design | GDPD 2010 | 6
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1. INITIAL STORYBOARD The first draft of the story, though knotted, laid the basic framework of the storyline while also establishing the prime purposes of the characters.
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The bear watches overhead as a bird tries to get its lunch, insects sitting within a tree bark. The bear sits within the confines of a ridiculously small zoo exhibit. Cue, title card. Cue, the title card. The bear is now asleep and its legs twitch in restless dreams. It dreams of its childhood as a cub. It followed its mother everywhere, that is, until it’s mother was no more. In the dream the cub sniffs around its unconscious mother as flashlights come on lighting up both of them. The bear wakes up to a noise. A kid and his mother stand at the railing. The kid is striking the railing once again in a bid to grab the bear’s attention. As the kid carries on with his shenanigans, the bear observes as the kid’s mother talks on the phone. Intrigued, the bear picks up a stray leaf and mimics her actions. An ice cream man arrives at the scene giving much happiness to the boy. As the mother and the kid buy their ice cream, the bear’s interest is usurped by the bicycle. At this moment piece of bark falls on the bear’s head raining dust
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and bugs over the bear. Terrified, it frantically scratches itself everywhere. Vigorously scratching its itching back against a dead and drying tree, the tree gives way and falls, bridging the moat between the bear and the outside. The bear looks at the fallen tree in a nostalgic moment and crosses it. A stranger on a bicycle, in a moment of panic, slams against a nearby railing and falls into an exhibit. The still spinning wheels of the bicycle catch the bear’s attention. Before you know it, the bear is speeding down a slope on the bicycle towards the exit. At the exit an alien din builds and a sight reveals itself. Cars, everywhere. The bicycle overturns at the gate, sending the bear flying onto the asphalt below. The bear looks around terrified. Cars and buildings everywhere. A slowly encompassing terror tells the bear everything it needs to know. “You don’t belong here”. The bear is completely overwhelmed. It clutches its ears to shut out the noise and the screen goes black.
The epilogue begins with a newspaper clipping, a bill board both showing the bear on a bicycle. The bear is now a celebrity. Everyone is flocking to see the bicycle-riding bear. The bear sits in its exhibit, this time without the tree. In the midst of the crowd the bird pecks at popcorn littered on the ground. A noise builds and before the bird has a moment to look it is run over by a vehicle. A passing visitor notices the crushed bird. He can’t help but stare at the grotesque sight. He raises his camera and with a click the screen goes black.
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Black fades to reveal the camera sitting within a tree bark crawling with bugs. A giant eye appears followed by a beak picking at them.
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A bear looks up from under the tree with pieces of bark falling on its face.
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The camera cuts to reveal a desperate bird stuffing its head into a tree.
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17 The cub sets down the rock to look to the side at it’s mother. It runs to catch up.
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A stray bug escapes the bird’s beaks, falls down hitting the bear right on its eye. The bear is quick to clutch its face.
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The bug falls to the ground and immediately crawls under the tree through an opening in the bark as the bear watches.
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Title Frame
19 The bear in the zoo stirs in its sleep.
15 The cub lifts a rock to find bugs under it.
20 The looks to find its mother walking across a log, fallen across a river.
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The cub cautiously approaches the log.
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As the cub touches the log, things goes dark. Its mother lies in front of it unconscious.
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There is a repetitive sound of his stick striking against the metal of the railing.
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32 The cub shields its eyes.
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The bear tries in vain to shut off the sound.
33 The bear wakes up with a start within the zoo and finds it has a couple of visitors.
37 The stick its mark.
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25 The asleep bear is clearly agitated.
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The zookeeper walks along the railing.
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The cub approaches its unconscious mother. The scene is swept by light from flashlights.
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A kid strikes a stick on the railing in a bid to wake the bear. He tosses the stick at the bear.
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The stick is picked up by the bird which tries to use it reach further in to the hole in the tree bark.
40 The kid runs around excitedly.
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The kid attempts to jump into the enclosure, his mother catches him just in time.
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57 The bear continues with its act as the mother and her son complete their transaction.
The bear picks up a leaf from the side.
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An ice cream man arrives on scene with a large box. The kid is clearly happy to see him and pulls his mother towards to him.
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As the kid gets his ice cream, the bear is transfixed by the slow spinning wheels of the contraption that is the bicycle.
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The bear looks on the mother talks on her phone. It’s interest is piqued.
It pretends the leaf is a phone when the scene is cut into by the sound of wheels.
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58 The cycle’s stand is snapped out of place.
55 The bear lifts its arms so as to emulate riding a bicycle.
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The ice cream man zips off. Soon after, the kid licks the scoop and accidentally drops it.
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The bear flinches as the kid receives a tight slap across the face.
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Another bug falls atop the bear.
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As the mother walks away carrying her troublesome child, the bear scratches itself.
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As it bites itself it notices the fallen tree. The tree is fallen across the moat.
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A whole chunk of the bear breaks rainging bugs onto the bear, sending it into a frenzy.
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The bear finds a good spot on the tree and rubs itself faster and faster, the tree starts listing dangerously.
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The bear doesn’t notice. Fresh bugs start crawling into its fur. It finally notices in shock.
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75 The bear rubs its behind on the floor to scratch the new itch.
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The bear remembers to the fallen log from its childhood and approaches the log, haunted by memories.
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The bear crosses the fallen log and finds itself out of the enclosure.
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The bear walks past the dropped ice cream.
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The ice cream man comes back on his bicycle, notices the bear out of the enclosure and in a panic, crashes into a railing. He gets flung into a neighbouring enclosure.
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As the bear is transfixed on the bicycle, the zookeeper walks out a close-by men’s room and finally notices the bear.
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The zookeeper notices someone climbing the railing and rushes to help the ice cream man out.
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The bear is transfixed at the wheel.
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The zookeeper blows his whistle at the bear, while the bear advances towards the cycle.
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100 By that time the cycle’s wheels are spinning and rushes through the zoo.
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On the bicycle is the bear. Although first bewildered, it begins to enjoy the wind.
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117 The bear recovers itself and looks around in a puzzled fashion.
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The bear continues its trip down the slope. The exit arch gets closer and closer.
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As the bear looks to the exit a light shines in its face. It soon realizes what lies ahead, traffic. A shock comes over it.
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The bear zips past a shocked mother and her child and towards the exit of the zoo.
The exit looms ahead of the bear on the bicycle.
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115 The cycle hits against a curb, sending the bear crashing into the pavement.
119 All around it, a city and its buildings are all it sees.
120 Traffic leads to a full-blown panic.
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The traffic is overwhelming on the bear’s senses. The cars whiz past the bear causing an enormous din, throwing up dirt and smoke.
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A newspaper shows the bear’s adventure.
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137 He takes out his camera and as he focuses on the bird, it gets run over by wheels.
The bear looks to the arch again, which now reads “Welcome”.
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The bear sits in its enclosure, now a celebrity. Crowds horde to have a look at the bear which stares at the paintings on the wall.
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There are pictures of the bear all over with bear merchandise sold at shops.
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Meanwhile, the bird hops through the crowd and picks at fallen pop corn.
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The bird lies mangled and dead but the guest takes a picture anyway. With a click - black!
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The evolution of the story After the storyboard process was completed there were still holes to plug. There were loose ends that were frayed. There were a few things in particular that tugged at my mind when I looked at the storyboard in front of me. It sent me down an extended road in which I reconsidered every aspect of the story.
»»For one, it was far too long to be completed within any reasonable time frame. When I looked at the story board it looked like it would come to 10 or 12 minutes of animation. That was out of the question. Had I edited all of the information to fit within a 7 or 8 minute time line it would not do the story justice. »»The non-linearity was not working as well as I would have liked it to. The distinction between the past and the present was murky at best. When it came together it lacked clarity of thought and the time-line was too knotted for my comfort.
»»I had given too much screen time to characters other than my protagonists. »»There were several shots and scenes which served trivial purposes or no purpose at all. For a labour-intensive medium such as animation, this was not a smart move. These shots, I decided could either be replaced with shots that served the purpose better or removed entirely.
Keeping these gripes in mind, the problematic sequences were altered. It took on the following structure — But wait! Before I do, I need to take you through a detour to cover some ground on events in my personal life. I believe these events are of import to the current document. These events have swayed the direction in which this project developed irrevocably. It is important that I take this detour because, to be honest, I was more vested in this story than the story with which this document is concerned.
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The diagnosis It started several months ago when I noticed my attention span was shrinking. It was getting worse by the day. In the beginning, it was nothing to be concerned about. A few attention lapses here and there, a lack of focus with my work, nothing that couldn’t be dismissed as a “phase”. Perhaps a lack of motivation with the project but nothing worth making a fuss about. Fast-forward a few more months and symptoms were becoming more pronounced. My concern grew as they started taking over aspects of my daily life. My ability to focus on anything was non-existent. I started reading about lateonset ADD. It fit my description but not quite. I would spend great many hours staring into space. All the while I was getting anxious, and suspicious even, of everyone around me. My nights were restless and my daydreams were filled with unspeakable violence. I had withdrawn from every social circle I had ever been in and I no longer enjoyed the company of my friends. Anyone walking up to me for a friendly conversation, my parents no less, would
make me grit and grind my teeth. Every casual encounter spiralled into a violent reverie until I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands and feet trembled all day, more so when anxiety struck. I decided to withdraw and withdraw I did. I was shut up in my room for days while my mind was ever more out of my control. I was unable to put my mind to anything. Reading was out of the question, even movies became unbearable after a few minutes in. Before I knew it, I had depression. Now, that I could identify but it sure as hell didn’t help. I was in such state when I decided to approach my mother with words few people bring themselves to utter without vigorous persuasion. It had to be done or the violence that had been so far confined to my skull threatened to escape. Woken from dreams I found myself with clenched fists and jaw. “I need to go see a doctor” I told her. At this point my work was at a virtual stand-still for many months.
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I found myself in the cold, clean air-conditioned office of Dr. Ravi Samuel in Chennai. He is a psychologist. I looked around to see a dozen other people waiting to see the doctor. “Are all of these people crazy?” I wondered. When my turn finally came I walked into the room and with a clearing of the throat I began recounting all my oddities. I referred to words scrawled on the palm of my hand because I didn’t trust myself to remember everything that I had to say. The doctor meanwhile sat calmly and adjusted his glasses. He had a look about him which said he had already heard everything he needed to hear before I was done talking. I wrapped up and he finally got his turn to speak. “It’s a classic case of OCD.” he said, “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”. He further explained to me that there were different kinds of OCD. Mine was of the “compulsive thoughts” flavour. A finality washed over me. I wasn’t horrified to hear that I had a condition because I had already come to terms with the fact that something was wrong. Dr. Ravi
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suggested I go see Dr. Rangarajan, a psychiatrist who practices at the same clinic. I had a similar experience with Dr. Rangarajan, the same speech and the same diagnosis. I would require medication I was told.
Fast-forward again to a few months later. I have been on pills of different colours and I’m feeling palpably better. My anxieties are reduced and my depression is a thing of the past. My work has been gaining pace steadily. My days have also been punctuated with periodic trips back to the clinic where I undergo counselling sessions with Dr. Ravi and prescriptions from Dr. Rangarajan. Presently, I am happy to report that my mind is much healthier. The debris may take a while to be cleared completely but great strides are being made in the meantime.
Visualizing the project anew The reason I had to take that detour is that the span of time described above greatly shaped my project in the months after. My entire thought process was changed during this time. Having come out of the cave, I set about with a few sweeping changes with a new found clarity. The zoo-keeper’s character had to go entirely. Several shots with the bird in it were removed. The final sequence with the prologue within the zoo was taken out in its entirety. Most noticeably, I adopted a frame system in which I show the characters in multiple frames simultaneously and hope that, with good judgment, the audience’s eyes move as I need them to. I had observed such use of frames in a couple of short films such as Codswallop by The Brothers Mcleod and The Usual by Nicole Stafford. “Codswallop” by The Brothers McLeod
“The usual” by Nicole Stafford
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2. FINAL SCREENPLAY Once the storyline was cemented, it was then streamlined and interwoven in the form that is presented in the following pages. It should be noted though that the style of narration prevents me from applying a typical screenplay format.
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When the editing was said and done, the film consisted of ten sequences. Half of them occur in the past during the bear’s childhood and the other half occur in the present where the bear lives in a zoo. The narrative is non-linear and experimental in its approach. It flits back and forth between events of the past, in a forest, and the present, in a zoo. I have attempted to weave the two timelines in as fluid a manner as I could concieve. Because of this very nature I found myself unable to stick to a standard screenplay format as feature films are written in. Instead I describe what happens on screen while remaining as faithful to the film’s idiosyncracies as possible. The final screenplay is as follows.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING Written by DINESH RAM SEQUENCE 01 (PRESENT) EXT. ZOO - AFTERNOON The shot opens with a black screen. We hear scratching sounds and a hole is stripped open in the frame. As the glaring light reveals we realize the camera sits inside a tree bark. There are bugs crawling all around. A massive eye swoops in, blocking the opening. It glances left, right and centre. In a moment the entire hole is blocked with a large set of beaks, snapping at the bugs. All of the bugs have by now retreated to safety deeper into the hole. The beak gives up and gives way back to the eye. The bird is revealed and so is the bear. After a few chirps, the bear watches as the bird flies away off-screen. TITLE CARD SEQUENCE 02 (PAST) EXT. WOODS - MORNING The screen starts once again with a black frame. The camera sits under a rock and daylight is revealed when a cub lifts the rock to look underneath. The light also reveals bugs under the rock. The cub puts the rock down returning us to the black frame. The CUB runs to its MOTHER BEAR, who is scratching her
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backside on a tree. Out of curiosity, the CUB attempts to imitate her. From it’s facial expressions it becomes obvious that this activity is very pleasurable. As it gets into its groove a sound in the background gets louder and louder. A sound of concussion against metal. SEQUENCE 03 (PRESENT)
The BEAR observes this and picks up a leaf and imitates the MOM by putting the leaf to its ear. It is interrupted when the stick flies into the frame striking it on its head. The KID is clearly enjoying himself, imitating a monkey as the MOTHER continues talking in the background. The BEAR looks back at the leaf in its paw, which is now crumpled. The BIRD in the meantime picks up the stick and flies away. SEQUENCE 04
EXT. ZOO - AFTERNOON A BEAR looks surprised as it looks out of its enclosure. A KID strikes a stick against the railing repeatedly. His MOTHER is talking on the phone beside him. MOM I was watching TV when I got the call. There’s clearly something going on between the two. Isn’t it obvious? Who do you think it is? Could it? Wait just a sec. What? The KID points to the bear excitedly. KID Ma! Look! It’s looking at me. It’s looking at me! MOM That’s nice, Kutti. The MOM gives a nod and continues talking animatedly on the phone. MOM So what was I saying? Uh uh. What happened next? Did he leave her? My god! The poor woman. Ya, she did text me. We spoke all night last night. What?! She never tells me any of these things. That bitch!
(PAST) EXT. WOODS - LATE AFTERNOON The CUB comes out of the bushes and looks about. It stands at the edge of a road.The MOTHER BEAR is loitering meanwhile right beside. The CUB looks between its paws to see the yellow line of the road. The CUB looks up and notices an opening in the trees. A smoke trail catches its attention. It goes on to investigate. A sound from the distance comes closer and closer. The sound of a bell. SEQUENCE 05 (PRESENT) EXT. ZOO - LATE AFTERNOON A bicycle bell is ringing. We zoom out to see that it’s an ICE CREAM MAN on his bicycle. The KID gets excited and starts hobbling over to the ice cream man. As the KID and his MOTHER buy some ice cream, the BEAR gets intrigued by the bicycle. It’s eyes spin like the wheels. It is snapped out of it when the ICE CREAM MAN takes the bicycle off it’s stand and rolls away. In the meantime the BIRD is having a feast now armed with the stick so as to reach inside the hole better. As the BEAR continues watching the bicycle, and the KID happily licks into the ice cream cone a gust of wind starts blowing.
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The KID’s cap blows right off his head and rolls along the pavement. The tree beside the bear begins to sway dangerously. You can hear the creaks and cracks as the bark splinters. The KID looks up and the tree’s shadow sweeps over him. The tree falls forward and onto the camera. SEQUENCE 06 (PAST) EXT. OVER THE RIVER - EVENING The CUB stands on a tree bark that lies fallen over a river. The CUB looks to the horizon. There are silhouetted buildings under construction. The machinery reverberates and the sound booms. The CUB looks on for a while and goes on its way crossing the river. SEQUENCE 07 (PRESENT) EXT. ZOO - EVENING The camera tracks side-ways through the scene. The tree is fallen, crushing the railing along with it. The KID sits there with his head covered with his arms. He gets up and pats himself as if checking if he is intact. As he lets out a huge sigh of relief a shadow engulfs him. He looks up and a gasp escapes him. The bear stands there towering above him. The KID trips and falls backwards. The BEAR leans closer sniffing him. As it does so a purse smacks into the side of its face. As the purse falls to the floor he looks to the side to investigate its source. The MOTHER stands there armed with a stick. Her knees are shaky and she is visibly afraid. The BEAR exchanges glances between the KID and the MOTHER before it turns its back on them and walks away.
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SEQUENCE 08 (PRESENT) EXT. ZOO - EVENING We pan the camera through tree branches as the BIRD lands on one of them. It hops closer to the camera and regurgitates food into the mouths of its chicks off-screen. The camera continues to pan. Through an opening in the trees we see that the BEAR is investigating a bicycle leaning against a wall. There is a sign above the wall directing people towards toilets. The BEAR inquisitively spins the wheels, rings the bell as it had seen before. It is completely entranced. A wheel lands on asphalt and the trees whoosh past. The camera slowly pans to reveal the bear on the bicycle. The BEAR looks bewildered. Looks around at the passing landscape. The bicycle continues to speed down a slope. At the end of the slope is a gate and above the gate, a sign that reads “Thank you for visiting”. As the BEAR continues down the slope it starts to enjoy it, the feeling of wind through its fur. The bushes pass in from of the camera and transitions to black. SEQUENCE 09 (PAST) EXT. WOODS - EVENING The CUB is sitting at the opening in the trees. It looks ahead. The camera emerges from behind leaves to reveal a bustling cityscape. There are buildings everywhere with wisps of smoke coming from its chimneys. There are sounds of the city, there are distant sounds of traffic mingling with the sound of industry. There are trees being felled. Meanwhile behind the CUB the MOTHER BEAR looks up in the opposite direction. There are shots intercut with those of a speeding car. Its engine roars. There is a disturbance among the trees and the MOTHER BEAR can sense it. As the car draws close enough for both of them to hear the CUB turns to look and before it realizes what has happened, the car swerves around
the turn and it screeches forward toward the MOTHER BEAR. Its headlights light up the full figure of the MOTHER BEAR. The car shows no sign of stopping and collides. At the moment of collision, with the car’s horn blaring, the screen turns black. SEQUENCE 10 (PRESENT) EXT. CITY - NIGHT The eyes of the BEAR snap open at this memory and the bicycle trips over a curb, flinging the BEAR forward. In shock, it looks about. It is outside the gates of the zoo. The blare of the car horn merges with reality. In front of the BEAR is a line of traffic. It remembers the car that took its mother victim and reels backwards. Everywhere it sees, it sees more cars and more buildings. The din is deafening. The BEAR covers its ears. It is surrounded by the cars. As it tries to dodge one, a car screeches to a halt only adding to the noise. The camera tracks up to reveal the bigger picture of the BEAR, not only surrounded by cars but by buildings. The camera tracks higher up to reveal much more of the city and its humdrum. The BEAR realizes it is trapped and has nowhere to go. It starts backing away from the chaos of the scene. It backs away further and further until it turns around completely and runs back into the compound of the zoo. The camera pans up to reveal the BEAR retreating into the zoo and past the sign. The sign now reads “WELCOME” in big bold letters. CREDITS
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3. ANIMATIC The animatic served its purpose in the timing of the tale. Especially in the case of a non-linear story such as this one the insights provided are much more significant than a storyboard or a screenplay.
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I like to think that the non-linearity of the narrative came about only because of the lack of my ability to stick to a train of thought for more than a few minutes. That is an attribute the bear has borrowed from me. It recounts its experiences as a cub, daydreaming until it is snapped back rudely to the present by a trigger in the environment. Case in point, the cub is scratching it’s rear end against a tree when the story snaps to the present, triggered by the sound of the kid striking a stick against a railing (as the little rascals so often do at zoos). Here’s another example. When the cub and its mother are on the road through the woods, shaded by a canopy of trees, the narrative once again switches back to the zoo with the sound of a bicycle bell. I recognized that the two timelines within the film required distinct styles so there was no mistaking which was which. One solution was that I would apply a frame system such as the one I had referenced previously in the section titled “Evolution of the story”. This novel method of story telling solved a few problems and brought new challenges with it. One of the problems it solved was that displaying two
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and sometimes three frames at the same time dramatically reduced the duration of the film. Whereas Codswallop maintained two frames simultaneously at all times, it would be restrictive in terms of timing for a story like my own. Therefore I much preferred the format used in The Usual. I kept the option of maintaining as many frames as are necessary to tell my story. Aside from the technical benefits, I also felt it was appropriate in an artistic sense. I needed the space within the zoo to feel a lot more claustrophobic as compared to the open spaces in nature. I felt this would be accomplished by having a black frame squeezing in on the characters. It also required the audience to split its attention between the frames on the screen in such a way that would mirror my own attention span during my turbulent times. However it should be kept in mind that this frame system would have to be used with wisdom. It needs manipulation in ways that would deliver without obstruction, with the audience’s eyes travelling from one frame to the other. No frame should hold attention for more time than it needs because it would take away from it’s neighbouring frames.
The animatic for this film was done initially using TVPaint and later-on using Photoshop layer comps with the resulting frames compiled in After Effects. By this time, I had a definite idea of what I wanted the film to look like so I had some clues as to where the process would need to go next. In accordance, I made sure my animatic was detailed with very few things left to the imagination in terms of both story-telling and movement. Here, once again I would like to thank Ketki for helping me edit the animatic and doing a wonderful job of giving it scratch sound.
Shot progression - Shot 01 from sequence 01
Shot progression - Shot 01 from sequence 02
Shot progression - Shot 04 from sequence 04
Shot progression - Shot 01 from sequence 08
Shot progression - Shot 04 from sequence 02
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Other miscellaneous shots from from miscellaneous sequences in the animatic.
Shot 02 from sequence 02
Shot 03 from sequence 03
Shot 13 from sequence 03
Shot 02 from sequence 04
Shot 04 from sequence 04
Shot 05 from sequence 05
Shot 02 from sequence 05
Shot 04 from sequence 06
Shot 05 from sequence 06
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Shot 04 from sequence 07
Shot 08 from sequence 07
Shot 05 from sequence 08
Shot 14 from sequence 10
Shot 05 from sequence 09
Shot 11 from sequence 09
Shot 15 from sequence 09
Shot 08 from sequence 10
Shot 13 from sequence 10
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4. VISUAL REFERENCES Pursuing a style that is not only appropriate but complementary to the story is essential. At this stage emphasis was placed on selecting a style that was perfect for the story regardless of my comfort with it.
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The story has many parallels with Matthias Hoegg’s film Thursday. This is no coincidence. I watched and re-watched the film soaking up inspiration every time I pressed the play button. Scott Benson’s films featured in my playlist and David O Reilly’s imagery in “Please say something” and “The external world” were also note-worthy. I took lessons from these films and let them mix and mingle with thoughts about my film. It left me with many clues about how I wanted my film to look. I wanted my film to feature geometric designs and bold colours such as the ones I had just seen and that is how I had construed the film from the very beginning. Having chosen such a style, animating in After Effects seemed the most logical. I had not tried any serious animation in After Effects, a thirty second clip for a Motion Typography course, but nothing more. At first it seemed awfully steep to be attempting such an opus in a medium I had no control over nor did I know the limits and capabilities of. But I had conviction in the style I had chosen. To bow out of it due to technicalities and to stick to a tried and tested technique seemed a betrayal of the vision. Besides it offered an opportunity to try something I hadn’t tried before and to my knowledge no one around me had tried.
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There was another factor which contributed to my decision here. I was extremely time bound. I had seen deadlines whistle past far too often. To succeed in this endeavour would mean that I would be able to skip past processes such as clean-up, coloring and to a certain extent, inbetweening. It was appealing and it was foreign. It was a gamble I willingly took and now, as I write this document I can declare that I was able
to achieve an efficient production pipeline after tinkering and experimenting with the new tool. Presented are some images from films and other miscellaneous artwork which influenced me through the process of visualization.
“Please say something” by David O’ Reilly
Still from “The External World” by David O’ Reilly
“A night in the woods” by Scott Benson
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Let’s take a moment to reflect on something that, I believe, matters. In the months of deliberation during the animatic phase of the project I saw various independent short films, by professionals and students, which used geometric design as their visual style. I could think of no one in NID who had as yet attempted such a style. There are droves of short films in the archives, all of which use stop motion, hand-drawn, cutout and other traditional techniques but none which displayed prowess over the digital medium as Thursday did. Scott Benson, David O Reilly and Matthias Hoegg are only three out of many film makers who whole heartedly embrace the computer as a tool for art, so why hadn’t any of us? We wouldn’t approach it with a ten-foot pole. All of our films try to emulate a “handmade” feel and they succeed too. But why do we so shy away from technology? It is after all as much a fact of life as pen and paper. I would even go so far as to say, the digital medium is treated with contempt in some cases. The glowing adjectives - “raw”,”dynamic”,”alive” - ascribed to traditional media are rarely applied to digital media. While I agree that these adjectives may not be suited to work seen thus far, I argue that it is for lack of trying. Was the first ever bouncing ball done on pencil and paper “dynamic” or “raw”? Technology is a skill that must be developed and nurtured as any other and to take it for granted would be a mistake.
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We boast of being home to stories from all over the country, a country of a billion people. I would argue that a large variety of stories would require as large a variety of styles and outlooks. While we experiment widely with traditional media we are neglecting media that film makers around the world would deem conventional in this day and age. It could also be considered unhealthy to send students into their professional lives without giving them the tools that would put food on the table for the rest of their lives. Such is industry today.
Make no mistake, I am not calling for the advocacy of one over the other, in fact, the opposite, I ask that one not be advocated over the other. People around the world are using the computer as a tool for art as well as industry, equally long strides are being made in both of these fronts. When we aren’t engaged with a medium as ubiquitous as this, we lose track of what has been made possible because of it and more importantly, impossibilities that are worth challenging.
A still from “Thursday” by Matthias Hoegg
Still from “Post personal” by Eamonn O’ Neill
Still from “Thursday” by Matthias Hoegg
Still from “Last Lives” by Scott Benson
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A still from “Upstairs” by Matthias Hoegg
A still from “Coda” by Alan Holly A still from “Thursday” by Matthias Hoegg
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A still from “Hallucinator” by Charles Huettner
A still from “Left” by Eamonn O’ Neill
A still from “Tant de forets” by Burcu Sankur and Geoffery Godet
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5. TREATMENT AND STYLE DEVELOPMENT Now came the part where I had to do my homework and make the chosen style mine. It required plentiful research and experimentation in order to establish a viable look for a sevenminute short film.
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After having looked at several references from films and from illustrations, I knew what the salient visual features of the film should be. Geometric features with more straight lines than curves. This sharpness in terms of form would be subdued and balanced by gradients of colour and light. This gradient would emphasize the perceived form of the object, be it a prop or a character. Lighting and colour composition plays as important a role in animation as in live action. I kept these in mind while I tried to develop a look for the film. I experimented with gradients and how to go about applying them to animation and characters in a way that wasn’t tacky and was not excessively tedious. I looked at references such as the ones to the right to take cues from them about how to go about creating the atmosphere and mood I felt my film needed.
A free desktop wallpaper from wallpaperscraft.com
A screen from the game “Alto’s adventure” by Harry Nesbitt
Illustration by Arthur BOURDOT
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Illustration by Théo GUIGNARD
The first order of business was to begin to put down the patches of ideas that were in my mind into Photoshop. I didn’t go into detailed drawing at this stage because I was more in pursuit of the “feel” of the scene. I wanted to emulate the effect created by those artists I was referring to, at the same time trying my best not to imitate them. The key to achieving the effect I guessed was to get a hold of a self-formulated system of lighting. I needed to figure out how I wanted light to behave in this world of my creation.
In plenty of examples of stylized art light is manipulated similarly. Its effect is either magnified or subdued in accordance with the subject and the effect intended. But at it’s core are the very same fundamental properties of light, and that commonality lends believability to the scene at hand. That is what I was searching for in the colour sketches below. Taking a scene from the animatic that I gauged to be ideal for this experiment, I explored how light might
behave and with each passing sketch it started resembling the picture I had in mind. At this point I paid no attention to form. Only once my grasp on light grew firm I advanced to exploring the forms within the scene.
I began with a scene in the fourth sequence where the cub wanders out to investigate a cloud of smoke on the horizon. The canopy of trees in darkness and the sky is lit by the evening sun giving great contrast.
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“The woods” from shot 3 of the second sequence
“The bridge” from shot 3 of the sequence 6.
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Lighting In this section, I will focus on the technical side of things and present my learnings and epiphanies from my explorations. Lighting can lend great realism to a scene that would otherwise be devoid of it. It lends mass to otherwise flat entities. Consider the scene to the right. With a little bit of effort and few additional layers, a flat scene changes into a pseudo-3d world with depth.
i. I placed a few basic shapes to begin with. As you can see, it is very flat. Not completely flat mind you, because it still has entities overlapping each other. It can hardly be passed off as a Michaelangelo. (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
ii. Decide a source of light and make shadows according to the surface and volume of the object. In Photoshop I usually apply the colour along with either an Overlay blend mode or a hard or soft light. (Fig. 2) iii. Add a layer of light towards the imaginary source. I once again apply colour to the appropriate places and use a pin light or colour dodge blend mode. (Fig. 3) iv. I then added an additional layer of light on “Lighten� blend mode in order to emphasize the highlights. Make the shadows by visualizing lines drawn from the source to the ground. (Fig. 4)
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It is here that I must mention a few things worth noting. People tend to make shadows either black or choose one out of perhaps 50 shades of grey. This leads to unrealistic results. The truth is that not all shadows are black. The three primary colours in light are red, green and blue. When a coloured light, for instance red, impacts an object in the absence of any other light would be black. But that is rarely the case in nature where light mixes in all kinds of ways. So care must be taken to find the appropriate coloured shadow for the corresponding colour light.
A shadow cast by a red light in the presence of blue and green ambient lights would cast a cyan shadow. Those acquainted with the additive colour wheel would recognize that the colours, red and cyan, have a complementary relation to each other. So it goes with the rest of the primaries. But I must admit I am hardly in a position to lecture anyone on this business. I have yet to wrap my head around this phenomenon. I find the colours I need by experimentation but I do find that it makes a great difference to a scene.
At this point I had a firm grasp of what I wanted in terms of both form and mood. I went into Photoshop for one last time and created a landscape scenery as a final look for the film. I have applied everything I had learned of colour and light to technically accomplish the goal. It also served as a template from which elements can be re-used. As far as the result goes, I would say it comes very close to how I had initially visualized my film.
All the experiments with lighting and form came together in this picture. It set the template for later backgrounds.
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6. ENVIRONMENT DESIGN Thanks to due diligence with the animatic the basic scenery was already in place. The caveat was that it all had to be translated to the chosen style in a medium that was entirely new to me.
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I had so far worked in Adobe Photoshop and it worked well too. But some doubts which had, till now, occupied the back of my mind, came to the fore. The initial plan was to complete the backgrounds in Photoshop and proceed to animate the characters in After Effects. It soon became clear that this approach wouldn’t do the trick. Creating the backgrounds in Photoshop meant I had little control over the movement of elements such as trees and movement was necessary to convey even simple atmospheric things, such as a gentle breeze. I wanted the backgrounds to imitate life better than that. Therefore I took it upon myself to create the backgrounds from scratch within After Effects where I had the control I desired. Having moved my production pipeline into the After Effects workspace, I could move individual leaves if need be and the control freak in me rejoiced. Creating the elements in After Effects meant that these shapes would be made of vectors and therefore would be infinitely scalable. The environment design phase for me included the creation of the background and giving it appropriate “ambient animation”.
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1. I create the basic shapes of the leaves with Shapes or Masks according to convenience. In this instance I have used Shapes. As you can see below there are two layers, one for the diamond shaped leaves and one for it’s stalks.
2. These two layers are Precomped, in this case renamed simply as “Leaves”. I duplicate the new comp and change the blend mode of the upper copy to “Stencil Alpha”. This trims everything I put underneath to match the alpha of this comp.
As you can tell, it is very much the same lighting process I demonstrated in the previous section with the basic forms. This process might seem tedious to the beginner but when repeated several times it becomes a matter of reflex and judgment. It takes time to master just as any other tool in your kit. To summarize, create basic shapes, one or two layers for light and one layer for shadow.
3. I start with one shape layer sandwiched between the two comps. The shape layer will be whatever colour representative of the light in the scenario. Masks are applied to this layer and feathered to any degree as required. I change the blend-mode to “Pin Light”.
4. In addition I add a similar layer with the blend mode changed to “Lighten”.
At the end of this sequence of steps all one needs to do is to Pre-Comp this whole set up and set the anchor point to the base of the stalk. This unit of leaves is now ready for animation and ripe for reuse.
5. This final layer completes the stack. A similar layer for lighting but this time it is masked and feather closer to the stalks than the leaves. A dark purple shape layer on “Overlay” blend-mode gives us the shadows.
necessary. With this technique I was able to give the illusion of depth to an otherwise flat style. How well the illusion has worked is up to the audience to decide.
Using the technique demonstrated above, all kinds of objects, from tree trunks to the characters themselves, can be created with tweaks wherever National Institute of Design | GDPD 2010 | 52
The first step in creating the environments was to get back into Photoshop, and make a few sketches.This new geometric visual language was new to me. I had thus far in all my projects used a hand-drawn organic style. The object of the sketches was, more than anything, to get a hold of the forms and the composition. Once I had a firm grasp on the visual language, the layouts within the animatic sufficed as a base on which to build the final background. I had invested significant amounts of time and did not skimp while laying out the shots in the animatic and at this stage it paid off. Here are some sketches of the backgrounds in the film followed by a series of progressions which show the process of background creation. It should be noted that many of the elements within these images have subtle motion applied to them in the film in order to breathe life into the scene so it doesn’t look like the characters are standing against a card-board cut out.
The bridge across the river (sequence 7)
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Sketches of the woods from sequence 2 : shot 1(bottom left), shot 2 (top) and shot 3 (bottom right )
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The making of “the woods” (sequence 2)
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The making of the “opening in the trees� (sequence 4)
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The making of the “silhouetted buildings� (sequence 6)
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The making of the “tree bark” (sequence 6)
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The ninth sequence and the tenth sequence required shots of a bustling city. A few sample buildings (pictured) were made by Ketki Jadhav and this set of buildings were duplicated repeatedly, flipped horizontal and transformed in every other permutation and combination until the entire scene was populated with buildings. Assembling the scene required an isometric grid on top of which an initial floor plan was created and the buildings placed on top. The buildings were assembled in three sets of layers : back,
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middle and front. In addition, a few wisps of smoke, traffic and lamp posts were added to give detail. These visual elements combined with sounds of the city come together to create the chaos the scene demands.
The making of the “bustling cityscape� (sequence 9)
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Colour palette “Let nothing be an accident” are good words to live by when making a film. Colour can be used to create harmony or conflict within a scene. Colour affects us psychologically, most of the times without us even being aware. The use of such a powerful device is oft overlooked. My interest was piqued by an article on the internet which studied the use of colours in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. What I give here is a summary of the article with the crux of the information that I took away. The credit here goes to Isaac Botkin. For those further interested I would recommend his website www.isaacbotkin.com which hosts quite a few insightful articles about films and cinematography. Certain cinematic conventions have developed through the years which help convey emotional information. For example, warm colours convey safety and cool colours suggest danger. The reason Isaac chose to focus on Black Hawk Down is that Ridley Scott chose to completely overturn the above conventions. “When we first see Scott’s Somalia it looks like this - dirty, grungy and brown. A greeny-orangey tobacco-filter brown. Diesel smoke makes even the sky grubby.” In contrast, “US soldiers live in high-tech steel barracks lit by cool halogen lights and laptop screens. Remember, cinematic convention usually 61 | Graduation project | Thank you for visiting
says that warm tones indicate a cosy safe place and harsh blues like these mean cold clinical uncertainty, but not in Black Hawk Down. The colour palette is unfamiliar territory just like Somalia.” The scenes belonging to Somalian urban wilderness are bathed in warm colours as opposed to what any convention would suggest. Every environment the protagonist considers a safe house is bathed in blue light. As the story progresses these elements really come together in a collision of colours. With more danger to the protagonists the yellow begins to bleed into the safe blue light making an ominous green. In the third image you can see the ominous green in action with the explosions and fire in the same sickly yellow tone as the deadly sunlight, but brighter. At this point every thing in the image communicates peril to the audience. Eventually, the relief force arrives to rescue our wounded protagonists and a new wave of blue washes over the scene overcoming the yellow. This use of colour becomes even more impressive considering the lack of variety in the setting, the characters wear the same coloured camouflage outfits and the buildings all look the same. What he couldn’t convey with other elements Ridley Scott uses colour to convey.
Admittedly I did not notice these signals when I first watched the film, but I knew exactly what I was looking at. We could all tell what dangers the environment presented or whether it offered sanctuary before the characters could say a word. It worked so much so that if I were to look at a shot of a Somali soldier lit in blue halogen lights, I would have assumed him to be a spy or a double agent of some sort. Feeling inspired, I set aside some time frame colours as the focus. I worked on some images in Photoshop, used many stacks of adjustment layers to derive colours until I found the exact combinations I wanted. It was at this point in the process that an idea “dawned” on me, the day could progress through the film.
The first few sequences could start out with the light of the morning sun and through the afternoon and into dusk. There were multiple reasons this made sense. The first reason is that it was many times better to show time progression without notifying the audience in any way that the time has passed, for example with placards reading “3 hours later”. Second, it created contrast through the film to communicate shifting moods. The story takes its dark turns and the light reflects the same. This approach meant that the last sequence, the darkest of them all was darker in a literal sense. There is a reason that in films several intense scenes are staged better at night than in broad daylight. It can evoke emotions it otherwise
wouldn’t. Shadows have been used by film makers everywhere to evoke mystery and despair. These practices have had their staple place in intense scenes and I saw no reason to not use the device. I split the colour palettes into two lines much like Moses in a field of rainbows, one line depicting environments in the zoo and another to show the colours of the environments set in the woods. the thickness of the lines show the relative usage of colours. It should be noted however that the colours I have identified in the palette only serve as a guide and are representative of the mood of the sequence as a whole and not representative of individual shots.
Sequence 1
Sequence 3
Sequence 5
Sequence 7
Sequence 9
Sequence 2
Sequence 4
Sequence 6
Sequence 8
Sequence 10
Present sequences
Childhood sequences
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Colours from Sequence 1 Shot 1
Colours from Sequence 2 Shot 3
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Colours from Sequence 11 Shot 5
Colours from Sequence 6 Shot 1
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7. CHARACTER DESIGN Design decisions with the characters became much easier once the style had been assimilated and countless sketches served as exercises in visualization within the confines of the style.
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Bear (as an adult) Ever since the cub came to be in an enclosure, it has grown up real quick. It shows signs of exhaustion and inactivity. It sits around all day with nothing to do with only a tree as a companion in its enclosure. Its eyes have less life in them than they used to and it’s ribs poke out of its sides. Every bear learns by imitating it’s mother and since it lost its mother prematurely, those lessons have been left incomplete. It uses it’s curiosity to learn new things, odd as they may be, from staring at the zoo’s infrequent guests.
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Bear (as a cub) The cub in the film is an inquisitive little fellow. Ever so curious he follows his mother around hoping to learn and see new things everyday. I hoped to capture that innocence in this character. I chose not to give this character a mouth for simplicity’s sake and frankly, it didn’t need it in any part of the film. It also bears (pun intended) a mark on it’s chest as moon bears do. Except in this case it is a prominent inverted triangle (which also features in the title design). The cub is captivated by every new thing it lays its eyes on, be it bugs crawling around or a looming city on the horizon, everything is an object for its curiosity.
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The bird The bird was the first character I designed, it was my “gateway� character so to speak. Trying out different styles with the bird allowed me to get up to speed with the visual language of the characters. The characters that were designed henceforth borrowed the different visual devices that were established in designing the bird. This is also where I first experimented with the one-shadow layer and two light-layer formula on a character. The bird in the film is hyper-active with typical crowlike turning of the head. During my time at home recovering from my illness I fed many crows a lot of egg yolk so I had plenty of time to observe their mannerisms.
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Kid Full disclosure : I hate children. This kid portrays my impression of kids - hyperactive, good for nothing, troublesome little brat. I have designed this character so every line and curve that makes him inspires annoyance in the audience. Kids this age always are. He is about six or seven years of age; that age when he hasn’t developed the notion of empathy. He wants everything he sees and the world revolves around him. I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy.
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The kid’s mother This character was sketched and designed by Ketki Jadhav. She (the character, not Ketki) is a modern day, city-dwelling, stay-at-home mother who once might have had a job but gave it up to have a kid. The kid and the mother converse in English like urban people do now-adays. She is constantly on the phone talking to her friend while her child wreaks havoc but her motherly instincts kick in when her kid is in (perceived) danger. She dresses in western attire.
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Ice cream man The ice cream man, unlike the mother and the child, is clearly dressed in ragged clothes and belongs to a poorer socio-economic status. This is further reinforced by the fact that the mother converses with him in Tamil when she purchases ice cream. He rides a rickety bicycle which then unexpectedly gets stolen by an ursine suspect. He is an old man with hands that tremble and wears a yellow stained banyan and a checkered lungi.
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Identity crisis I happened to show my project guide, Dhiman, my work-in-progress when he remarked that he could not tell which bear was which. Now this came as a jolt to me because, given the non-linear nature of the film it was simply impermissible to confuse any of the characters for some other. It would add too much confusion to an already meandering time-line. So the very next day I sat about and tried out a few changes to the bear’s design in both its cub and its adult form.
In the end I decided upon two things, a small tuft of hair above its forehead and a blue patch above its snout and neon blue iris in its eyes. Here is how the characters looked after the changes we applied. I leave the rest up to the audience’s intelligence to understand what goes on in the film. (Figure 2 and 3)
I tried all kinds of things in order to give it some form of peculiarity which would be unmistakable. As I kept trying out things one on top of the other, the cub began to look like it would run away from home to start its own punk rock band. (Figure 1)
Figure 1
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Figure 3
Figure 2
Bird
The bear as a cub
The bear as an adult
The mother bear
Kid
The kid’s mother
Ice cream man
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8. PRODUCTION DESIGN AND ANIMATION Having gone through the trouble of developing a distinct production pipeline it seems necessary that the process be documented at a technical level not only so it may serve as a reference to others but also for record-keeping of my own.
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Inexperienced as I was in After Effects with respect to character animation, I had to devise new ways to do the job before me. I was aware of the Puppet tool and other mechanisms such as parenting objects to one another in order to move an arm or a leg, but after a few attempts at it with a dummy character, I was convinced that using these tools by themselves are not going to give me the results I wanted. There are plenty of tutorials online where character animation is demonstrated but all of them seemed to be directed towards a cut out animation style or could only be used for very rudimentary motion. To add to the complication, the film has three kinds of characters - avian, ursine and humanoid. Each of these required that different processes be followed in order to give convincing motion to them. One tool for all was not going to
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cut it. So what follows is a detailed explanation about how motion was achieved for each of the three character categories. Of course it is going to be a difficult task to provide a description of each and every step not to mention tedious, I will try to be clear while maintaining brevity. This section might be considered significant because it is unique to the film at hand and explains techniques that documents of other short films might not.
Avian I decided to tackle the bird first. It is the first character which makes its appearance in the film. It seemed the simplest and the most difficult task at the same time. Simplest because its motion was the simplest and it had the least number of parts. It also required less “acting” as compared to the rest of the characters. It was also the most difficult in the sense that it was my first attempt at character animation in After Effects and I had a long road ahead of me before I could master the process and animate fluidly without being held back by the tool of my choice. The first step in the process was to create the bird in the first place. I used Shape layers for all of its constituent parts. The bird consisted of a head with the eyes and beak parented to it. A long neck shape, a blob that is the torso, wings and a tail, each performed as a separate unit. There are two legs made of three segments each. All of the parts were parented to the body shape. The image to the right shows the bird within the interface with the basic shape that is its body, highlighted. When all this is said and done, the entire bird moves when the body is moved. Yet there were still problems, specifically with the legs. There wasn’t any way to keep the leg stationary and planted on the ground when the body mass was moved. It could be done with laborious adjustment but it would still be imperfect. In order to fix this issue I turned to a plug-in called DuIK for After Effects. This is a free plug-in created by a man who goes by the name DuDuf. This tool may be found at the URL http://duduf.net/ index.php/products/after-effects/duik. What this plug-in does is that it helps establish Inverse Kinematic relationships between objects or even Puppet tool points, the likes of which is found in many 3D applications such as Maya and 3ds Max. This allowed me to move the body while the legs not only stayed stationary but bent in a natural way.
The bird in the After Effects interface
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The neck shape has two puppet points which allowed it to bend and contort. This setup put together allowed me to animate the bird as you see it in the film. The complexity of such setups might be discouraging to some but it offers some comfort in the fact that this is a one time process. The same bird with the same set up can be carried over for use in as many shots as necessary. Despite the complexity this setup is not fool-proof as I found out while I animated the third shot of the film. The part where the bird turns sides and looks the other way still required manual creation of the shapes in order to get the effect needed. And so it is with animation in After Effects, some might consider it time saving tool but in order to produce work that doesn’t look like it came out of a cookie-cutter, one must always be willing to get down and dirty with the individual keyframes.
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DuIK interface
The parts of the bird are animated either separately or piggy-backing on the motion of a parent object.
Adjusting the colour of daylight within the scene
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Ursine One might assume, as I did, that having gone through the drudgery of the elaborate process described previously, the bears could be animated in a manner similar if not identical. But I was proved wrong, oh so wrong when the time came to animate the bears. The stocky legs of the bear would not deform with the grace of the stick-thin legs of the bird. The bear also has textures that the bird does not, such as the hairs on its side, the inverted triangle on its chest and the dark patch on it’s head. In order to accommodate all of these design elements I devised an entirely new work-flow that I describe here and on the page that follows. As with the bird, the first step in working with the bears is to create the bear using shapes in After Effects. The set-up for the bear works in a way that is starkly different from the bird in that it does not make use of DuIK tools or the Puppet tool. Its components are individual shapes each parented to the main control that is the torso.
The shapes are individually animated, by manipulating the vertices and by pivoting them around an anchor point set at an appropriate location. At times it is ill-advised to trust the automatic in-betweening function of After Effects. In such cases it is best to manipulate the shape on a frame-byframe basis such as done in traditional animation in order to get the result desired. Another advantage of this process of animation is that it provides you the option of editing the keyframes at a later time. Many animated sequences only reveal their faults when looked at in posterity. It certainly helps that the timing can be adjusted not only by directly moving the keyframes but also by applying the “time remap� tool on the finished composition to further finetune the actions. A little diligence and technical proficiency goes a long way.
Animating the masses of the cub. The ears might be kept within the same Shape layer or out of it depending on the convenience of the shot.
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Alpha layer
There are two layers to the character of the bear. One layer contains the silhouette of the bear and another contains it’s colour and textures. The masses of the bear are first animated paying no attention to the textures. By “texture” I mean everything that is contained within the silhouette of the bear. At this point the focus is on the acting and the energy and movement of the masses. Fine tuning the timing and spacing although helpful is not necessary. Once the masses, or should I say, silhouettes have been animated the next step is to animate the shapes that will be contained within the silhouette. These textures within the silhouette have their movement co-ordinated with the keyframes of the silhouette.
Texture layer
Composite
This texture layer includes the eyes, the hair, the dark patches that cover the face as well as the peculiar triangle on the bear’s chest. The masses then serve as the alpha channel for the texture layer. To put it more technically the After Effects Comp which contains the alpha information serves as an “alpha matte” for the Comp that contains the texture information.
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Here you can see the two layers of lighting sandwiched between duplicates of the composition containing the animation
Lighting the shot within the second sequence
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Humanoid Humanoid forms require a mixture of both techniques elaborated previously. The arms and legs would work beautifully with the DuIK tools while the features of the face and the clothes would benefit from the techniques used for the bear. Below are pictures from some experiments I did with a placeholder human character. I went back to an assignment from my second year in NID and recreated it in After Effects in order to see how I might achieve a neat arm raise with breaking of joints. The arm uses the in-built Puppet tools but adjustments are made at every frame to the paths in order to get it to work just fine.
Re-creating the breaking-of-joints assignment for the sake of experiment
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The facial features are parented to the head and are animated corresponding to the keyframes of the head.
In this instance the arm is broken up into 3 parts, the upper arm, the fore arm and the hand. The torso is transformed using three puppet points.
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About the production pipeline Many digital animators make their assets in either Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator before importing them into After Effects to give them motion. This is especially true of character animation in After Effects. However I chose to make it all within After Effects. There are a couple of reasons for this decision. Firstly Photoshop would produce bit map images which would not be as scalable as compared to vector graphics. “Why not Illustrator then?” one might ask. The answer for that is two fold. First, I am unacquainted with Illustrator and learning two large softwares at the same time would prove too much for me. Secondly, most of the tools that I might need to create assets in Illustrator is already present within After Effects. What’s more, Shapes used within After Effects has greater flexibility and is far more manipulable as compared to imported vector imagery.
within a minimum and a maximum limit at a set frequency. I used it extensively in order to animate things which required any form of random motion. The gentle sway of leaves in the backgrounds and hand-held camera effect were achieved in this way. “Do you really prefer this method of animating to the hand-drawn method?” is a question that has been put to me with mild jest. To this I replied that it is not a matter of preference. I felt this style would be best suited to present the story and so one must try and do everything in his/her power to deliver it. In other words, I didn’t choose the technique, the story did.
The “wiggler” interface
A specimen of the graph editor
Most times a simple easing in or out of the keyframes does not give the desired results. That’s where the graph editor comes in. The graph editor, although intimidating is immensely useful in creating movement that is just the way you want it. It affords precision like no other. And that is the “brief” summary of the process of animation that I employed. One other tool I would like to mention is the “wiggler” in After Effects. It generates random key frames, spacial and temporal,
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9. COMPOSITING AND RENDERING Compositing can be used to enunciate portions of the film using the camera as a movable object and using additional lights for emphasis and effect. Its power is not to be underestimated as I explain within this section.
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Once the animation was finished and the characters were overlaid, I did not think it would require much else. But the possibilities of compositing were made clear to me in a blog named “Greyscale Gorilla”. In a video the host breaks down a composite by an animator named Rich Hinchcliffe. Through the video a grey, matte, drab scene transforms into one with crackling life and energy. (pictured right) I vigorously took mental notes from this video and when I opened my project files once again I saw in them a new potential. Although I had satisfied most of the film’s needs in my opinion, I saw that it could be taken much farther if it was so desired. I added shadows underneath my characters in order to ground them better within the scene. With shadows, the cutout-like characters came to have mass. Some of the more dynamic shots required camera movement, either a track or a pan or a hand-held effect. All of these effects greatly add to (or remove from) the intensity of the scene. Some subtleties add to the believability such as an overbright effect when the cub lifts a rock to reveal daylight. Let us also take a moment to appreciate how much of our field of view is out of focus when we see the world. Blurs play a great part in lending realism and depth to a scene. It serves another purpose from a filmmaker’s point of view. It aids as a device to guide the audience’s eyes to focus on the subject. Blurs can often be scene overused in films so caution needs to be exercised. Lastly colour corrections are made in order that the entire scene blends within itself integrating the elements completely.
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An example of outstanding compositing by Rich Hinchcliffe
Allow me to discuss one particular shot in order to bring all of the above into context. This shot occurs towards the end of the film within the ninth sequence when the mother bear gets fatally struck by a car. The scene begins with a camera that tracks sideways mimicking the real-life motion of a hand held camera. It overshoots the subject in the scene and returns to settle back upon it, the subject being the car in motion. The car rolls out from behind the bushes with it’s headlamps glowing like two suns, lighting the foliage awash with yellow.
Creation of this shot required something more than the simple parallax effect employed in other shots. It required that all of the elements be animated with slight perspective shift that comes with the tracking of the camera. When the car is in view new lights come into play. This shot has some visual similarities to the example to the left, they have the same glare in the centre of the frame and both have incoming traffic. So I was able to employ many of the same methods that I learnt from the tutorial.
The rush of warm colour from the center of the scene draws a sharp contrast in a view that is other wise dark pink and blue, adding to the unexpectedness of the event. The camera movement, the blurs, the colour, the light and the shadow all played their respective roles in giving the scene the look and feel that was desired.
The shot in question
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10. SOUND DESIGN No film would be complete without sound design that complements the on-screen visuals. It can either be used to complement or to reinforce something that requires stressing.
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Sound design plays an essential role as a complement to the visuals and provide information that isn’t provided through visual means. In films, they can be cleaved into two categories; diagetic and non-diagetic. Among the diagetic sounds are foley, ambience and dialogues. The non-diagetic sounds are composed of music and/or narration. There might also be sound effects added for dramatic effect. The ideas about the role of sound were first tested with scratch sound for the animatic. Scratch sound design for the animatic was done by my friend Ketki Jadhav. I would also like to thank Satyajeet Prabhu for helping me out with a couple of initial drafts of sound and also putting me in touch with Sample Culture, the sound studio that would come to perform the music and sound design for my film.
Ambience
Foley
The ambient sound in the film works to reinforce the audience about the setting. For example, this film deals with two distinct environments, the woods and the zoo. So it stands to reason that the past and the present will be distinguished with different ambient sounds. The zoo has a bustle about it to bring the scene to life. The howls and hoots and chatter of other animals in the zoo echoes through the scene. There is an occasional distant hum of the city but not enough to bring attention to itself, it only serves as a foreshadow to the end.
Simple things such as the bear’s footsteps in the woods compared to the footsteps of the kid in the zoo give cues in one form or another as to the texture and material of the setting. Transitions from sequences in the woods to sequences in the zoo require strong foley cues in order to snap the bear out of its reverie.
The imagery set in the wilderness will be overrun with sounds of nature, running water, crickets chirping deafeningly and the occasional bird. This helps draw a contrast sharper than ever and so the audience doesn’t have to rely on visuals alone for information.
There are a few instances where this happens. The first is the transition between sequences 2 and 3. There are similar transitions between sequences 4-5 and 9-10. In the first of these instances the bear is snapped out of its pleasant memory of scratching its behind on the bark of tree with its mother. The memory is rudely intruded upon by the sound of the kid striking a stick against a railing. The percussion eventually gets loud enough to break us into its own timeframe. In the finishing sequence of the film the natural foley is completely absent being completely over run by the sounds of the city and the cars within it. Things grow loud enough to disorient the bear and finally send it running back into the zoo.
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Dialogues and voices As far as dialogues go, I have always had a distaste for jibberish voices, voices that do not contain words but are only indicative of the tone of the character. I preferred to have real dialogues instead as it tends to go with the “believability” approach through the entire film. The dialogues do not play a pivotal role in the narrative but provide the characters with more depth than they would have otherwise. I had been greatly conflicted between the language of the dialogues, idle talk though it may be. The choices were between English or my mother tongue Tamil. This issue was resolved simply by looking deeper into the characters’ profile to see where they came from. To my mind the mother and the child were part of a modern nuclear family and they spoke English to each other as you see so many families do these days. However when it comes time for the mother to interact with the ice cream man who clearly does not belong to the same socio-economic class as themselves, she switches to Tamil.
My mother recording dialogues for the Mom character.
The Mom character’s voice belongs to my mother, R.Bharathi and the kid’s voice is a combination of a pair of twins who attend my mother’s music class, Shri Krishna and Hari Krishna.
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Comments on the process from the sound designer The prep work for the film began with listing out the samples required scene by scene and then putting together a bank of sounds that would populate the session file. The initial process began with a very broad layout of most of the elements in the first 3 scenes being given their own tracks in a sequential manner to give the visuals a basic sonic dimension with only little regard to mix - this was the very first draft to initiate a communication towards developing the final output. Rough music was added to assist in pacing the scenes and also to audition a vibe. The next draft was an extension of this featuring all the scenes including rough musical ideas exaggerated and sprawled across each and every scene - again, to audition different possibilities and also to have a dense enough arrangement that could be edited down rather than beginning with a minimalist set of ideas that would require expanding. From this point it the process became significantly more nuanced and dwelled into mixing the sounds spatially & musically editing the pieces to be exact in their impact. Certain sections were completely driven by the sound design whereas sequences involving plot movements were supplemented with modifications of the previous musical ideas. Some musical ideas were also reworked in light of the latest modifications.
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The final stages involved primarily working on the details, sonic transitions & mastering. Creating a sound scape that followed the timeline of the story without giving away the climax was probably the most tricky - While the protagonist of the story seemed to deserve a theme, it ended up being a better idea to exclude this to leave enough room for much needed guesswork for the audience. The pace of the story also was tricky, specially with both the past & present timelines of the plot having intense points requiring moments of build up and release that didn’t take away from the final sequence. The past timeline of the story urged me to make music very much from a tribal stand point of not using a click track or heavily quantised sound which then ended up working out very well from the rest of the film too, but it did leave little room for standard music editing possibilities. On the upside, the project fit entirely on one instance of my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) - typically split into two separate sessions.
Akhil’s screenshot of his DAW setup with the ambience, dialogues and music laid out.
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11. FILM STILLS The labour described in the prior sections culminate in these few pages. What follows are a few of the stills from the film with the backgrounds materialized, the characters placed and composited.
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In retrospect This has by far been the largest and most ambitious project I have dared to undertake. It has taken me a long while to get to this point and I regret not a moment. This project has seen me through some dark times which, I daresay, has changed the course of my life for ever. Single mindedly chasing a gargantuan task such as this has taught me a great deal about responsibility. It has taught me to let go of my perfectionism that is not a friend, it obstructs. This project comes together as an amalgamation of everything that I have learned over the years at NID not only from faculty and courses but also from my friends and from observing the world around me.
understand the structure behind them. What is it about certain films that jerks a tear from your eye or laughter from the bottom of your heart? Surely, there must be a formula to it all. A little calculation on a paper napkin and it should be crystal clear, right? Working on this film has taught me that there are things that are impregnable to analysis. What I found was a far more organic and growing creature, shape-shifting through the process. In the end the biggest favour you can do for yourself is to water it consistently with your goodwill and dedication. Feedback is the sunlight that helps it grow.
I cannot put into words how much everyone’s support and company has meant to me. At times it has felt like that was the only thing that was propping me up. In a project that kept changing course and direction that was the one thing that stayed steady as a rock, something I could always count on. I am naturally of an analytical frame of mind. When I watched movies such as Wall-E, How to train your dragon and Kung Fu Panda, hell, even films from my batchmates’ repertoire, I have always yearned to analyze them in order to
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References and bibliography Content references Isaac Botkin - http://isaacbotkin.com/2009/03/color-theory-for-cinematographers Every frame a painting - Chuck Jones - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpXle4NqWI Every frame a painting - Satoshi Kon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz49vQwSoTE Greyscalegorilla - http://greyscalegorilla.com/tutorials/the-importance-of-compositing-a-layer-by-layer-breakdown-in-after-effects
Film references Matthias Hoegg - Thursday - https://vimeo.com/16962056 Matthias Hoegg - Upstairs - https://vimeo.com/68226169 Nicole Stafford - The usual - https://vimeo.com/93105940 David O Reilly - The external world - https://vimeo.com/19723116 David O Reilly - Please say something - https://vimeo.com/3388129 Late Night Work Club - Ghost stories - https://vimeo.com/73554156 Eamonn O Neill - I’m fine thanks - https://vimeo.com/28264507 Eamonn O Neill - Left - https://vimeo.com/44740087 The brothers McLeod - Codswallop - https://vimeo.com/60243664 Alan Holly - Coda - https://vimeo.com/131376602 Scott Benson - A night in the woods - https://vimeo.com/77456876 Scott Benson - Last Lives - https://vimeo.com/73061487
Image references Monument valley - https://www.gamecupid.com/sites/default/files/monumentvalley_gdc_long.png Monument valley - http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2013/12/mv_oct13_05-copy.jpg Alto’s adventure - http://altosadventure.com/ Cruschiform - Cabins - https://www.behance.net/gallery/20986885/CABINS-BOOK-illustrations
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Tutorial references Mt. Mograph - Intro to motion graphics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtv8QptWNbg Mt. Mograph - Character rigging - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yRFBgojsHk Matt Wilson - Character rigging - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xipgyv4f2rc Matt Wilson - Walk cycle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHoPsvFzVyc EC Abrams - Splitting liquid shapes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYyA9Bhr3IY EC Abrams - Roving keyframes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIT7MDz0iAE EC Abrams - Roving keyframes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOZwzLgJw9o EC Abrams - Gradient backgrounds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH1a53JgXdA EC Abrams - Classy sliding text - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYMy7vLLRo EC Abrams - Graph editor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTGViL5v8cA
Resource links DuIK - http://duduf.net/index.php/products/after-effects/duik DuCop - http://duduf.net/index.php/products/after-effects/ducopa-duduf-comps-parameters DuGr - http://duduf.net/index.php/products/after-effects/dugr
Documentation references Jam (Graduation Project Documentation) by Ketki Jadhav Visualizing the future of public displays (Graduation Project Documentation) by Khyati Trehan Ek Tamil (Graduation Project Documentation) by Aadarsh Rajan Identifying Shuddha (Graduation Project Documentation) by Ishita Jain Royal Enfield Packaging (Graduation Project Documentation) by Pragun Agarwal
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