As a part of the allied design course in the 9th Semester, I worked with the concept artist, storyboard artist, architect and animator Deeganto Joardar. In an initially month-long exercise, I aimed to gauge the ideas and practices that conductively lead to the creation of animated film projects. I began to explore the concepts of world-building through script, characters, environment and interaction. After the world-building stage came the screenwriting stage, in which we converted the story-based script into a dialogue and shot-directed script, internally beginning to set a tone for the film. Followed by understanding how storyboarding shapes the final cut of a film through its projection of motion, camera placement, anticipation and blocking. Creation of mood boards followed in the treatment stage, where various different aspects like tonality camera angles, pacing, colourizing, colour blocking, frame rate and many more invisible aspects of animation come together to create a justified world with set tones, treatments and rules.
As I threw myself onto the delicate web of the animation pipeline, trying to achieve everything it takes to learn how to animate a compelling story in a very short span, I came to a realization that the project would exceed my projected timeline and become a slower and more rigorous practice as an aid to my primary practice of architecture. As a result, the film became an addition to my thesis. As I try to examine the practices of life and death on the Ganga Ghats, the film buttresses the existing conditions, however in a fictionalized manner.
The story follows a recently deceased man, as his family takes him to be cremated on the Manikarnika Ghat in Banaras, as he constantly hovers over, monitors and criticizes the moves of the family in an attempt to hold on to a quickly fading sense of being. Eventually, small and passing instances lead him as well as his family to closure.
As the project is a continuous one and the film is still in production, here is a short animatic cut for the opening of the film.
Animatic cut of the film
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