Production Log #000
Summary | Time Line

4 months of pre-prod
1 month of prod
1 month promo

Production
December | making final animation
Final Production | safety cut with sound

Post Production
January | Final Production
Final cut with sound, Colour Correction and compositing
January | Promotional
Posters, Tees, blogging, Reflection

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pre production

Production Log #001
Deconstructing the Brief given

Create a 1 min signature film for AniMela Festival. The short should focus on the experiential aspects of AniMela Festival and what it means to the industry. Visually it should be vibrant and colourful and should feel Indian while avoiding cliché.
#experiential #vibrant #colourful #indian

Breaking down the word AniMela as a starting point

Ani = animate = bring to life = creator
Mela = fair = public spaces of convergence and celebration
Experience = Optimistic / forward thinking = solar punk

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Production Log #002
Idea sketches and Story

Based on the initial mind map, quick story arc explorations and feedback. We decided to explore the back waters of Kerala through the lens Solar Punk.

#SolarPunk #community #balance #nature #technology #humans #story #goodlife

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Production Log #003
Refining Story + idea sketch

Refining the story by breaking it down into shots and drawing thumbnails to understand the story better. Thinking about the available time and duration of the project and trying to find the optimum balance between quality and duration of the project.

Trying to sketch out an arbitrary shot based on references of back water Kerala photographs found online. Took references of vehicles to design hovering versions of them while trying to explore solar punk theme. #Story #Thumbnail #ShotBreakdown

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Production Log #004
StoryBoard

Drawing the shots to better understand the scope of work.

Drawing frames helps me understand all the addition designs that needs to be created the world and to populate the shot.
#StoryBoard #ShotBreakdown #ShotTransition

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Production Log #005
BoardMatic 01

After sketching/thumb-nailing and planning on paper, moved to digital medium #krita to further refine the frames. Stacking all the storyboard frames together to see them as shots.
#Boardmatic #Shots #preproduction #nosound

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Production Log #006
Character blocking

Exploring the character design and blocking on the room in 3d to have a better estimate of time and understanding how the work and detail can be distributed. served as a good proof of concept (POC)of whats possible as an idea.

the animation on her glasses are just a place holder, based on a gif animation in found online.

#POC #blocking #testingideas #3dblocking

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Production Log #007
Animatic 01

The number of shots while ideating felt a lot for a one minute animations, and was quite evident in the board-matic.

So as we moved forward towards making an animatic, we reduced the number of shots and recorded myself and added sound to time the animatic better.

All sounds were procured from www.pixabay.com

#animatic #Shots #preproduction #pixabay #sound #timing

Used flute as the lead music instrument for this version of the animatic

Used Ghatam as the lead music instument for this version of the animatic

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Production Log #008
3d Animatic 01

Using the video recordings, i quickly blocked out the characters and rigged them to recreate the actions in 3d, using Blender.

#3danimatic #Shots #preproduction #Blender

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Production Log #009
Production Planning

Early production planning trying to map out the larger blocks to finish the project by the end of December.
Creating an asset list based on the animatics created so far to have a more accurate schedule.
#Production #Planning #GanttChart #AssetList

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Production Log #010
Colour

Thinking about the larger colours at play in the animation. this particular exploration went with the idea of all environments and crowd elements would be in cool colours and only the lead three characters would have warm tones. this would help us curate the viewers eye and help them focus on the characters and their actions.
all the solar punk technology would use the bright vibrant colours of AniMela logo, as the palette naturally lent the mood to digital / future interfaces.

#Colour #ColourKey #Exploration #ColourScript

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Production Log #011
Colour Script based on previous explorations

Having a clear palette for the main characters and supporting characters. playing with the environment colours and solar panel tech colours. next in plan would be grouping the colours so that its easier for track and instruct.
#Colour #ColourKey #Exploration #ColourScript

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Production Log #012
3d Animatic edits

Based on the colour key, planned to change some shots, like adding a ferry, and changing the way the characters travel. Zenab, who is sitting in the paddy field has to travel the most, so had two intercuts of her travelling by ferry and rickshaw, before she meets the others.

#3d #animatic

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Production Log #013
Look Dev - chalky look on edges

Going back to nodes to create a chalky edge to 3d objects using real-time compositor nodes from the most recent build of blender 4.2
#compositor #realtime #lookdev #chalky

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Production Log #014
Look Dev - Lighting and Shading

Playing with shaders, real time compositors, animated textures for expressions and adding warmth in shadow regions. that was an eye opener.

The monstera leaf is from Cody Gindy’s patreon file and is just kept there as a place holder. All assets will be created from scratch for the final short.

#compositor #realtime #lookdev #animatedexpressions #lighting

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Production Log #015
Retiming the animatic for a sense of rush

One of the discussions that took place was if it makes sense to re-time the short to make it pacy.

There are two streams of thoughts at the moment, one where the environment is also factored in as a character that we cherish in the slow moving, some what equally timed shots to create a calm soothing tone, to reflect how an utopian solar punk place would look like.
#calm #balanced

v/s

something which is fast and edgy and creates a sense of rush and high energy.
#highenergy #peppy #pace

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Production Log #016
Retiming to 40 sec

Based on the feedback from the previous meeting with animela crew, we edited to even a faster cut of 40 seconds.

The focus is to keep it simple and crisp for replayability during the event.
#animatic #40seconds

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Production Log #017
Refine and study

Now that the base design is in place, now its time to dwell deeper into designs and find appropriate references.

Leela’s indoor shot has always been the test bed for testing POC and layout. So searched and studied traditional kerala home furniture and will try to incorporate that into the existing frame.

#kerala #traditional #homes

Adding subtle movement to leaves by adding noise modifier to a bend deformer in X and Y axis. (right image)

Testing alpha maps to create cutouts to optimise trees so that they can populate shots (left image)

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Production Log #018
Foliage Trees exploration

Now that the base design is in place, now its time to dwell deeper into designs and find appropriate references.

Exploring banana and mango trees and how to randomise based on rotation and scale. Have other tropical trees coming up. Some of the shrubs can be created with textures and hair / particle system. That is next on the list to explore.

The ground plan can be hand painted with forest path / walking trail on the way to add to the storytelling aspect of it.

#mango #banana #trees #trail

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Production Log #019
Experimenting with shots to fit 40-45 seconds

Playing with the pacing and shots to tell the same story in a different way that fits the 40~ sec feedback.
Trying a structure that shows one of the characters journey though 8 seconds and 5 shots

#reedit #cinematography

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Production Log #020
Redesigning shot 1 / thinking about image for poster

Thinking about warm fuzzy bloomy morning shots with sun-kissed god rays entering the room through wooden windows.
and tiny dust specs floating in the air like shimmers of gold.

#fuzzy #cinematography

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Production Log #021
Working on crowd designs and props

Designing the props in the room while focusing on style consistency and proportions.

The crowd maintain a sense of contrast between them and the main characters by being less detailed and desaturated than the three.

#character #prop #design

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Production Log #022
story narration has gone through four versions so far.

The story remains the same, as three friends meet at a common point and entire animela and we get to see the world around them in the process.

the first one focused on solar punk environement being an active character that needs its time and space visually in the short. the short was slow and a lot more static, exploring the world.
the second iteration focused on editing it down to 40 sec’s. the shots felt hacked and did not convey what was originally intended.
The third story delivery was based on match cuts, that shows of the world, not necessarily focusing on clear story telling, but keeping it visually interesting from replayability perspective.
coming back to simpler story telling and establishing three domains [ xr, comic and 3d (ar/vr/game/vfx) ] and concepts from the third iteration.

#story #storyboard #narration #iterations #transitions #shotbreakdown #visualstorytelling

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Production Log #023
Final Animatic

Isha simplified the story a lot more.
Each character finds a gem from their domain, they all meet at the entrance of the festival and place their gem on the gate. The gate opens to Animela festival.

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Production

Production Log #024
Week 1 | Production | Character Model Texture Rigged

Every student had one character to complete. 13 students, 13 characters. all modelled, textured and rigged.

While the characters were getting modelled, we were figuring out what would be the best way forward to animate expressions. We tried both grease pencil and animated textures as part of the exploration phase. We ended up going with animated textures as it was more consistent and predictable with the time constraint.

#character #modelling #animatedtextures #greasepencil

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Production Log #025
Week 2 | Production | Environment Props and layout

After the final character models were completed, we moved on to creating other assets from the short.

Animatic with 3d layouts (scene blocking)

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Production Log #026
FeedBack

Frequent feedbacks ensured that we had very little to change by the end of it. Annotating on the video itself proved to be a good way of keeping everyone updated about the changes required. Group discussions and suggestions were noted on miro board which served as a check list for all to refer to, especially for the people who were working in hybrid capacity.

#annotation #b3d

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Production Log #027
Week 3 | Animation

Students acted out the shots they were working on and used that as reference to animate the shots.

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Production Log #028
Week 4 | Polish and music

Ranjitha did an extremely efficient and more than usable edit for open house. Aptly named safety cut, this file ensured we had one working file that we could use for college open-house.

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Production Log #029
Week 4 | Tshirts

We turned the main three characters into vector art to print on tees. thanks to Jayasimha Chandrashekar the master print maker.

These are all the students who made Project Aagosham happen wearing their tee shirts.