Making of " Mīmānsā "

And soon it was time to leave the city of Ahmedabad with our incomplete film in hope to finish it along with some sand and sun. And to commute with an unfinished film means more ORGANISING. I wish I could hire someone to do that.

With sleepless nights and sweat beds of anxiety nervousness for our jury, it finally happened and got a good feedback from all the jury members. We now have to critically see our work and edit to make it crisp. However the documentation needs some changes to be made to make it formal and eligible to be submitted to the institution.  

Some sketchbook documenting of our film by @karandadi while line testing. It is a process in which rough gesture sketches of an action needs to be photographed and timed to get an idea of how the animation is happening before we add in details.

While we rest, this little guy tries to fill up in climbing up some shots for us. Longing for that day when all the boxes would have a tick mark on it. 

A list made to delegate the work of sound. Some notes for the scratch track of what we could think of while scripting and animating.

Getting back to making key frames while keeping a hard deadline until the jury is done.  

The long list of (mountainous) sequences and shots that needs to be climbed and conquered. Its called shot breakdown in filmy terms. And yes the ever longing period of production ie. animating it can break a lot of backs. Just cant want to finish this.

When a neighboring cat finds solace in a make shift work space.  

Sometimes animation project is all about ORGANISATION..!!

As we arrived on the final character design we also decided upon a simpler style for the layouts of just line drawings made by a micron pen. The layouts could then be manipulated as required according to the animation of the shot, to hide or reveal its full details depending on where the focus is needed. This helped keep the animation economical in shots where the camera moved across the scene.

The layouts went through a lot of iterations as we moved from one treatment through other in getting closest to our requirements and constraints. The treatment was simultaneously developed along-with characters as eventually both of them had to blend well on the screen.

The idea of using anthropomorphic forms (deer for Rohan and a solitary bird for Gunjan) was to distinguish the inclinations the characters bend towards eventually as the film proceeds. We borrowed the social traits of the animals and used them to differentiate between the contrasting nature of the two characters.

The final storyboard culminating from the script, thumbnail and character design stages.

Some anecdotes from the character’s lives. Exploring this side helped in knowing the character’s better and in determining their actions and reactions in particular situations.

Final Character designs for Gunjan and Rohan.