The Mailbox update!

5th Nov '13

So far my film 'The Mailbox' has been selected and screened at Chitrakatha '13 and it was a wonderful experience! I guess it's my first screening outside my comfort zone (MIT) and after it got over, it got a lot of cheering and hoots from the crowd, which I presume was mainly MITians. I saw all the flaws all over again. Something about the projector or the burned copy made it look much more florescent and saturated than I'd like. :( It was quite disappointing honestly, and after seeing all the other wonderful shorts from different countries, I felt my film had no place to be there.

That night I didn't ask anyone about anything. I shook a few friendly hands, and that was that. The next day I showed it to a really awesome faculty and friend there, Priyankar Gupta. I got some really good criticism and feedback from him and Dawameren Imchen (faculty) who was on the selection committee there. I recently I sent it to Prosenjit sir and Vaibhav sir, and they gave me some good inputs as well, so I hate it less now. ;)

After that I soon sent it to Asifa India, and it's been shortlisted for screening there as well! So I've decided to invest in a festival run. I did make a lot of mistakes with this film, and it's definitely not my best, but it's the first and it should get a viewing at least for the 1.5 years of blood and sweat that I poured into it.

I hope you guys get to see it asap! I'm really eager to hear all your criticism and feedback, but I cannot put it online during the festival run. Here're some screenshots and two posters.

Coming Soon!!

24th Sept 2013

ALRIGHT!! The wait is FINALLY OVER!

I have been SO busy struggling with finishing up this project and wrapping up all the lose ends that I totally forgot to update the blog.
So yes! The Mailbox is finally READY FOR A FESTIVAL RUN!

I still wish there was a cooler way to compress files without losing out on so much quality, but I think I got a pretty decent output. I've had no help at all with post production, and so - I learnt a TON of things on my own, the hard way, and a bunch of softwares as well (that too with a suck snailnet). Also I find now that I could have done more justice to the story and to the animation, but giving the pressing deadlines, motivation issues and lack of guidance towards the end, I decided to correct my flaws in the coming shortfilms that I dream of making!

Now enough with the complaining! I hope you guys love this film as much as I enjoyed making it, and learning from it! I hope it's something fresh for you, and that it gives you something, even if for a short while.

It's still not available for public viewing, but it's 'COMING SOON'!! ;) ;) (Now I get how much fun this is for the fim-makers and distributers)

With this message, I commence to make this blog - PUBLIC. O__o
Cheers and lots of love! <3 p="">

Finally! Some animation!

26th April 2012

It's interesting how a simple change in the color of the layout in TV can change your attitude towards animation. It started making my frames look better! Here is the old one VS the changed one.

I know, right? Anyway, the animation's finally kicked off! Atleast I've done something I'm proud of today.
We went together to speak to Shyamu (our HOD) about getting our deadlines extended. Somehow came to settlement to finish atleast one shot complete with the inking, color, bg and sound. Phew. Will also get a briefing on our colloquium paper on Monday. That's kinda a thesis paper.

Besides that on the Animation side, we're all going for 'The Avengers' tomorrow! Can't wait. We were so eager we pre-booked the tickets online and got top row seats! It better be good. The last one I saw was Thor, and I was horribly dissappointed with that.

That's all for tonight.

Francis character design!

13th April 2012

Here's the character development and design of my lead character - Francis Dias - a lost lonely introverted man with queer obsessions. I haven't spent as much time on any character as I've spent on him. This was the first turn around, again - with the dot eyes that I used in the storyboards. The reason I used these is because the tone of the film was not supposed to be funny, and big eyes tend to make us laugh. Now here's a trade-off - dot eyes that are very difficult to animate, and show emotions, or round eyes that help express better, but change the tone of the film. I decided wonderful animators like the Raunch Brothers who animate for Storycorps manage to make people cry with their wonderful round eyed characters, so why can't I? (Do check out all the wonderful films storycorps have animated till now. So simple, but so emotionally satisfying.) Anyway, here goes Francis.

Postman character Design!

13th April 2012

I'm finally satisfied with all the exploration and brain storming on this guy - and I LOVE how he turned out. I have only one concern now - whether he'll look as good in my animation - which is probably my weakest subject. Enjoy the sketches!


The postman first turn around. I was all in for the dot eyes - I even used them for my boards for both the characters, but realized the film was very expressive and there was little I could play with with the dot eyes. So I changed that.


I started changing the form, exploring with a-symmetry to create interest and balance it out.

The final cleaned up turn around of the postman.

A basic color palette used for the postman. It may change here and there when it reaches ink and paint. This is the first thing I had in mind when I first thought of the story.


The postman in action! ;) I really like how he turned out. Hope I can make him look the same throughout the film. That's all for now! Tata!

The most final storyboard there is for 'The Mailbox'

13th April 2012



Finally uploading this. It was ready quite a while back, but I thought since I've already uploaded one why upload this one as well? Anywho! This is the final animatic, and hopefully I'll try to get as close as I can to this. It's got sound and subtitles for a much better viewing! ;) Enjoy!

Ummm....

29th March 2012

Haaahh!! I am so out of schedule on the mailbox. Anyway, the reason I write is because I finally showed it to Gayatri ma'am. She's been taking a class for the juniors on Maya - so she came where I sat and asked me where I was. I looked like this:


Lately my answer to everything has been "Ummmmm......"
Dad: Nikhi, what about your portfolio? What about intership?"
Me: Ummmmm......

Mumma: What've you thought about your job??
Me: Ummmmm......

En: Where do you wanna go for dinner?
Me: Ummmmm......

And the worst one happened today:
Gayatri Ma'am: Where have you reached with 'The Mailbox?'
Me: Ummmmm......I'll just show you.

So I showed her the layers of the psd files that I took approx. 4 hours to save as Jpgs. The reason I could 'automate batch' them was that I had to manually hide/unhide what was to be shown in every frame. So she liked it! And thought I'd made a great deal of progress. The worst part is, premier is acting b***hy... It hangs every 5 minutes. I've tried everything, emptied cache, temp files, transferred my data to my HDD - it's STILL b***hy. :| Oh heck, I guess I'll just take a few days longer.

*Sigh*
Well. See u guys.

Update and progress!

17th March 2012

It's a quiet Saturday morning in the computer lab and I 'm currently on the BG stage in pre-production. According to my new safer schedule, I was supposed to be done with them on the 9th of March, and today's the 17th! Well anyway, I learned a LOT on the way, esp. about line, thickness, inking, depth, composition, and how WONDERFUL Maya is when it comes to taking a reference. I've become super hard in modelling. Of course it's just blocks, but it helps a ton to figure out the placement of objects. A huge inspiration has been the backgrounds of Triplets of Belleville. I wish I could get that kind of look in my film, with Goan backdrops. I really hope it looks pretty after the coloring. Hopefully I'll finish the remaining BGs today, and start with the character design. I have no idea how I'm gonna animate the characters in the backgrounds that have such dynamic angles. And the cycle! :-s Anywho, I've got a lot of great references.

Here's a peak at the great pen I bought from the stationary, really good for inking stuff since it has a really thin nib. Helps give the handmade look I want for my film:


Alok's been in a tense fix. He can't visualise his movie since the world of his film is upside down in an anglo indian house! I'm trying my best to help him as well. That's all for today morning.

Final storyboards for 'The Mailbox'

27th Feb 2012

The final storyboard. I have no idea how well it communicates. In the animatic the dialogue is missing so its harder to follow, but here I've added the important stuff. This was more difficult than a thought. I thought I could finish it in 2 days but I took 6, and figured out so many things on the way - especially creating the world of the film - where he lives, the rooms, the continuity, etc.

Colorscripts for 'The Mailbox'

The first few color scripts I tried - in order of the scenes. Learnt a lot about overthinking! Well as students we always want to make our first short film very fancy, with a really unique style. Now all this is great when 1) You're NOT a one woman job, 2) You're on a tight deadline and 3) You're not getting paid.

Leaving all of that aside, I took a lot of help from artists I admire who really know how to use color. Pascal Campion, Hans Bacher, Abhishek Singh's advice, and Ram, my friend who will be a graduate today! :) Also great films like Triplets of Belleville have had a huge influence on me, and I want someone that kind of look for my film. There are tons more who I have studied from over the years, but one thing' for sure, you really can't learn color unless you observe and imitate. After all that's said and done it comes down to the practice of color. It was really frustrating in the beginning. I wanted to concentrate on light, tones, mood, but we should always remember that we are trying to communicate something.

First Animatic!

So here's the first animatic!! The dialogues are missing. Anywho, this whole process took 1 week, and now I'm working my way into color scripts.