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.

Glen Keane's resignation

26th March 2012

Breaking news in the world of Laminasun! The wonderful Glen Keane has left Disney’s Feature Animation studio. He worked at Disney for round 37 years. For many of us he has been an inspiration, and has taught us so much about animation and characters. He animated lead characters in the Disney classics - Ariel (Little Mermaid), Beast (Beauty and the Beast), Alladin (Alladin), Tarzan (Tarzan), and one of his last characters at Disney - Rapunzel (Tangled) in her 2D form. Even before he left he made sure that even CGI as a medium could be used as a beautiful lifelike artform. He has given so many so much to take back. I will be looking forward to what he brings in next - and I hope the best for him! Thanks sir!

Here're some images of an exclusive article:
Make sure you check out his talks on animating on youtube.

In the news: Disney artists received an email late-Friday afternoon LA time with the text: “Glen Keane has decided that the time has come to take the next step in his personal exploration of the art of animation.” ( Brew has the exclusive full text of Glen Keane’s letter to his co-workers.) Keane had worked at Disney since 1974, though he left the studio in 1986 and worked as a freelancer for a period of time.

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.

Pascal Campion's Interview

So I've been trying to learn lighting and color for my film's color script. I didn't want anything complex, but the deeper I get into it the more difficult it gets!!! There are amazing artists who I
've been learning these things from, some of them are Chris Appelhans - who designed some of the art of one of my fav. films - 'Fantastic Mr. Fox', and there's Lou Romano who makes color scripts for pixar movies - here's his BLOG.

BUT! I'm sure you've heard of Pascal Campion as well! His work is so inspiring. It creates a beautful mood and they all tell an emotional story. Here's his BLOG, and along with that, a special interview on vimeo! Here it is.