satyajit2000

Whoao! Thanks a lot Martin for taking a look. I'm trying hard to make this project a reality and with all of your help I'm starting to believe I can do that. Your observations : >Shot 28 : Camera spends a lot of time ..: I agree. I'll include another angle. >Shot34 : Close-up : I think it would be nice. Let's see. >You're holding too long, and you could make the camera angles more >interesting. This is shot like Claymation - which is okay for Claymation >but you're doing CG. I admit the technique is inspired from Clay animation and 2D animation. For now I cannot include camera movements very much. I'd have to include more shots I think. When the holds are getting too much. >Characters are good. Thank you. >Need other voices besides the narrator. I'm afraid I cannot address this issue that you've raised for now. Like, I cannot do the voice recording again (Reason-budget). >Sound effects will help immensely Right you are. Sound effects will be there at the final version. >Characters need "Hair." In fact, I'm assuming you're planning on going >back and texturing everything later because the palette is very small. I'd rather not include hair in this project. I'd love to, but the rendering time would be too long to handle for my little PC. Well, re-texturing is an option I didn't thought over. Is it really looking that bad? >What age group is this aimed at? 8-13 primarily. >Do at least one glamour shot so we can see what you intend for the final >lighting. I'll post some pics from the final compositing. >GREAT JOB. ONE MAN, ONE COMPUTER, DOING A 30 MINUTE FILM AT HOME! You preached us just that. I'm just a follower. Thank you Ken for your obeservations : Shots 24 & 27 > Camera angle : I agree and I've replaced that right away by a 3/4th view of father. Satyajit

Animation WIP Part 2/9 Part 2/9 is uploaded and Part 1/9 is removed. This is the 2nd part of the nine part series of animation WIP. Only animations are there. Compositing hasn't been done yet. Please check it out. This WIP video file will be online for a window of one week. After that it'll be deleted from youtube and the subsequent part will be online. PART 2/9 Link Also, you can view the trailer HERE Please post your feedbacks, your previous feedbacks were immensely helpful. I'm starting to believe that this is in the right hands for critic. Satyajit

Thank you all for your comments and critics on Part 1, Not only I'll address the problems but I'll try to explain how I solved the problems. Shot 1 : Bending in ropes > Have to add a little muscle animation at both end of swing, bending the ropes a little. Shot 7 : Stepmom model > I thought as the witch is model as crooked, it's better to make stepmom simpler. May be a woman who is pretty and tries to look younger that age. Shot 8 : Hands sinking > have to make the channels of hand bones to zero slope interpolation. Shot 9 : Bow flickering > Happens when you've stopped a render of animation with dynamic constraints and start the render again from the next frame. The simulation gets recalculated and yields different results in the two render and so filckering occurs at the juncture. Head movement mechanical > have to offset the head animations a little and add a follow thru like motion. Shot 11 : Starving is not translated well > Have to work out a small inbetween shot. Any ideas? Shot 13 : Slippering of hansel feet > That's channel problem again. Have to make the feet IKs Zero slope. Other Question : The BGs are painted by a very talented artist "Soumitro Kheto" Satyajit Part 2 coming up on 30th

Go, check it out. Link Satyajit

Animation WIP Part 1/9 This is the first part of the nine part series of animation. Only animations are there. Compositing hasn't been done yet. Please check it out. This WIP video file will be online for a window of one week. After that it'll be deleted from youtube and the subsequent part will be online. PART 1/9 You can post your feedback and critics here on this forum if you face difficulty to post at bloggers. I've included the shot no and frame no for specifying mistakes and suggest improvements. I'm working alone in this project. So, your feedbacks are really valuable to me. I'm looking forward to make this real good. Please help me out on this. Satyajit

Rodney, It's one of the famous 'Aesop's Fables'. I had to tell it because the children were getting influenced by the underworld. Satyajit

Oops. Nilianjana is a girl alright. It's hard to for a guy to sound like that. Now, about the accent, I'm getting a bit worried about that. Any more suggestions? Satyajit

Acting during animation Animation is acting, but in a weird sense. The methodology of acting and preparation of acting directly contradicts with the methodology of animation. Acting school teaches various ways to get into the character and the scene, and act mostly involuntarily. Actor acts as if the scene is real and tries to be into the situation, into the moment, without being concerned about how his limbs, walks and face should move. These movements mustn’t be voluntary, or the act will look unrealistic. As Ed Hooks said in “Acting for animation” (There should be more books like this) – Acting is reacting. In this book Hooks tried to bridge the gap between acting and animating. Acting and animating still remains the opposite banks of a river. Ideas can travel from this side to that. But that’s all. Animators doesn’t have the advantages of the methodology modern actors do. For my characters cannot act involuntarily. Animation is very much voluntary action. So, every time I animate a scene, I find it hard to focus on the acting performance. I always have the feeling, that my performance is suffering immensely. As I cannot stay in the moment or character. Cannot apply the Stanislavisky’s principles. Sometimes I try to find solution in video recording a long performance and then playing it back to build my animation over it. But it seems unrealistic to apply it to cartoon characters. For example an actor mustn’t build up anticipation for an action. Which is a must for cartoon animation. So I couldn’t act, record it and rotoscope it for cartoon action. Rotoscoping may be applicable for ‘gollum’, but not here. Gradually my animation acts start looking like from the age of ‘Francois Delsarte’. Where the acts are voluntarily designed upon poses and physical signals. Studying various acting theories only helps in creating the scene. An animator has a tougher task than actors when acting is concerned. I have to recreate the act every time, mechanically, when I animate. Many time, sitting on my chair. So, I guess mixture of pose based acting and a deep striving to act involuntarily while putting together an act is the key. At every scene or sequence, I try to work out the act first. And, that’s the biggest problem. Keeping in mind the various principles of acting, I try to solve this problem. And most of the time this is where I get stuck. I cannot find the acting solution! Sometime the solution appears in ‘mime’-ing the act. Like trying to describe the words through gestures. But the words, which can’t be gestured, were most difficult to handle. I try to concentrate on Stanislavisky’s methods and other methods to work out the act. And when every trial is unfruitful I find it helpful to discuss with friends and family to find a way. And I tell you, this is a fine way, you’ll be surprised to find so many natural actors in your surroundings eager to help you out. A third problem was the narration in between dialogues. Like… “Save your sobering,” said the witch “It doesn’t help you at all” This ‘said the witch’ phrase disturbs the flow of act and results unusually long anticipations or follow-thru phases. I had to be careful and plan some in between acts during the narration. Anyway, after the act is designed and in my mind it’s essential to block out the animation at one go. Then I can start giving as much passes of anticipation, follow-thru and secondary actions my limited time quota permits. At the end, I think, it’s the acting, which separates a good animator from a bad. I’m only beginning to gather an understanding of ‘Acting for animation’. There’s so much scope for a better act within the same dialogues. I should be practicing acting with monologues and attend some good acting classes. I’m nowhere a good actor. And if I nurture this weakness, I'll see my goal getting far away. I know, the way to reach it is to keep on animating. And acting. Over and over again. It’s no wonder during Disney’s golden era an animator was considered an animator after he has spent at least 13 years animating. Now, the animations will start coming up. I’ve decided to put the WIP of the entire 30 mins film online. It’ll be shown in 3-5 mins serialized parts. I’ll use the youtube.com service to showcase this film. Also, the compositing of the film has not started. So, only the animation with the guide track will be showcased and put up for critics. You have to bear with blank backgrounds. Next …The First Part of the “Hansel & Gretel” will be online. I’m eager to hear opinions and suggestions about it. Satyajit

Yep, irises had to be done too. But I wonder if he'll look better with elliptical ones. Satyait

Okay, okay, that's enough children, I'm telling you the story!! There lived an old tiger in the jungle. One day, while chewing his lunch, a piece of bone got stuck in his throat. Old tiger was in so much of pain. But nobody came to his aid. He went for help to the animals of the forest. Pleading everyone to bring out the bone from his throat. But nobody has the courage to do so. Thinking it's another plan of the cunning tiger to catch his prey. After seeing that nobody is coming the old tiger vowed to everyone, and made a promise that, he'll reward the fella who'll bring out the bone. Then, thinking a while a crane stepped out. And with ease, she entered her head into the mouth of the tiger and take out bone peice. The old tiger was very happy and dancing with joy. But then, the crane asked for her reward. The old tiger became furious. He shouted with anger and tell the crane that she has already collected her reward. Poking her head into a tiger's mouth and still staying alive! Isn't that a reward by itself? Satyajit

You got it RIGHT ! He's missing his whiskers. Now is that gonna earn you some prize? Definitely yes!! I'm going to mail each and everyone of you this model FREE! To the ones with the right answer. .....GOTCHA !! Just kiddin ! Now, don't fade out that smile. Eventually this Tiger will be at your zoo after he's done with me. Satyajit

Model I finished yesterday. Can u tell me what he's missing ?!

The Rigging The discussion of the rig will be relatively short. Because I depend entirely on the rig installing software by Raf Anzovin called The Setup Machine (www..com). Having used a few rig. I must say Raf’s TSM rig is not the most complex, craziest rig. There are rigs with better controllability of the mesh. The squetch rig of Hash inc is one of them. Raf’s rig, although customizable to a vast extent, keeps it simple while animating, and that’s why I like it and can’t live without it. Rigging is an important step. For me, whatever magic functionality the rig may offer, while animating, the controls must be simple and minimal. This is very important. As I work alone, I constantly have to balance the quality in complexity and speed of production. So, the rig mustn’t have unnecessary controls that are seldom used. Extra control means extra time taken for animation. When the project is of 30 mins, an extra click while animating a frame counts. So, the rig must be sleek. Extra controls like squash-stretch can stay hidden from my view. I want to have a clear view of the character without lots of controllers floating here and there. But the question arises, does the quality suffers by keeping it simple? Not necessarily ! I’m a storyteller (or at least trying to be) more than an animator. To me, if the character carries out the story as I want it to, I can do without that extra facial bone. The point is, knowing when to stop pushing the rig. TSM 2 is a fabulous piece of software. It’s possible to dig into and customize the rig suiting your animation. In my case I use the stretching sliders seldom. Also, I never use the auto CG functions, doesn’t work for me. Apart from that, I’ve taken some steps to speed up the production time during rigging and posing/morphing. I’ve made a hand pose/morph for each hand from fist open position to close position. I can build up most of the hand animation using just these, for the others I can animate the fingers separately. The brows and face animation are done through pose sliders. I use only four Phoneme shapes – M, A in one slider and E, O on another. The eyelids are controlled through a single slider. Secondary animations of hair locks are done by Dynamic constraints. That’s it ! I’m not using a facial rig or special scripts. Mainly to speed up the animation production. But does that affect the storytelling? I guess only the animation itself can verify that. Acting during animation coming up…

The Animatic During the development of the animatic with the voice+music track in Adobe Premier, the storyboard proved mostly insufficient. So, I have to duplicate the frames and occasionally draw new frames to accommodate the camera cuts. This movie is not going to have many moving camera shots. I mean, shots like dolly and crane are limited. Most of shots being made are still shots and track shots. And, there is a significant difference between the timing of still shots and moving shots. In moving shots, camera itself becomes one of the actors and helps immensely to guide the eyes and mind of the audience. It’s a vital tool for the director to have the camera on move. Also, it uses the parallax to stand out the subjects and their relative distance. Whereas, in still shots, the camera becomes dead. And all the killing camera moves becomes totally irrelevant. In this case studying traditional animations (Disney, warner bros., anime) becomes helpful. And soon I began to discover the beauty and power of this technique. I’ll discuss more about this later. Now, I’ll return to the animatic. The reason I got into this topic is, it requires understanding of this difference while doing the shot divisions. Animatic doesn’t incorporate certain things. The time of one shot with a moving camera looks faster than the shot of a still camera. And again, the movement of actors in a scene makes shots shorter or longer. But, animatic is always still. And while designing a fast paced shot division, it becomes difficult to determine shot lengths. It requires understanding of the craft. Until one goes through the exercise of storyboard-animatic-animation several times, it’s difficult to develop this intuition. Anyway, I do not claim I’ve developed the intuition, but I noticed that I’m getting better with practice. My animatic is finished with about 120 shots in total. Timing and pacing is critical in telling good stories. I’m not that experienced in making a full proof animatic. During animation, I use to go back several times to the storyboards and re-edit the animatic. In this phase, the animatic becomes a rough sketch of the story. And, I’m all ready to get into the animation. But there’s a little step to be taken in before that. I have to rig, smartskin (weight) the characters. And have to give them expression/lip poses too. I’ll discuss about the rig next. I’d pick the witch model for dissection. he he… The rigging coming up…

The Voice & Music The voice artist is Nilanjana. And the music is given by his husband, Indra. Nilanjana works as a Radio Jockey. Indra is a professional Keyboard player, popular in local rock bands. They came recommended by the producing company Asha Audio. When we met, I discussed about the script and we both listened to some musicals. I remember we all liked the way “Boundin” by Pixar was composed. They took some time to come up with musical concepts and home recordings. Nilanjana has a little husky voice and I think that goes well with storytelling for kids. Indra composed some music loops and a nifty little signature tune of the movie. I sounded sweet to me. At the recording studio, Nilanjana’s voice was to be recorded first. After taking some time to cut out unnecessary huskiness and other defects were all set. I told Nilanjana to make it as expressive as possible. Indra was there throughout the recording. Sometimes, I intervened to give suggestions of dramas into the script, to make it expressive. Indra took care in helping Nilanjana during difficult voice modulations. After about two recording sessions the voice was done. Then Indra came into the scene, loading his homemade loops from his keyboard into the Recording Studio Tapes. The loops were all separated into tracks. After that, the recordist and Indra sat together to compose the tracks in Adobe Audition. Occasionally, cracks were discovered in the voice of Nilajana and those portions were retaken. The main problem with this type of process is that composer doesn’t have a clue, when to hold moments and when to pass. But here, since I got the movie in my head, I sat with the storyboard, listening to the music and giving cues where to hold the music, to indicate passing of time. After the music was done, we did a rough mix and I had in my hand the voice track, the music track and the rough mix. I can start from this. Listen to the unmixed track Animatic coming up…

The Storyboard Storyboarding is a very important step to me. May be the most important. This is the only time I look at the story as a whole, without any built up notions of the characters, the animation and the voices. Also, my storyboards don’t look like storyboards at all. No exposure sheet, no script tags. Nothing. Just comic book like panels. And, through the panels I try to design the flow of the story. The drawing is very important too. Other than staging and framing it incorporates various other important things like BGs, expression of the characters, the situation, and the overall mood. If a frame doesn’t feel sad or happy or violent, suiting my entire story, then it’s not working for me. The drawing cannot be rough, depicting just lines of action and compositions. Lines of action and compositions are important, but my panels must hold the moments in its entirety. In every sense, storyboard becomes a guide to the storytelling more than animation. My every coming step must respect and learn from this storyboard. Storyboard pages http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs1.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs2.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs3.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs4.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs5.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs6.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs7.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs8.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs9.gif http://www.satyajitchakraborty.com/storyboards/hgs10.gif The Voice & Music coming up…

The Script of Hansel & Gretel The story of Hansel & Gretel has several popular versions other than the original Grimm’s tale. Several dramatizations are available in DVD format. Live action, animation and stop motion, every variety. So, this project had to be unique from the script. I visualized the whole project to be aimed at pre-school audiences. May be Grade I/II. And, I conceived the script in a rhyme. Gathering from all the version of stories available, a pretty long rhyme is written. The writer was ‘Manas Choudhury’. He was my art mentor. He did a fabulous job with the rhyme. I knew he has got talents of a poet, but at the end he way surpassed my expectations. I still remember when he got his first few line, I knew it then that he has got it. A portion of script is attached. Storyboards coming up… Portion_of_script.txt

Thank you all, So you think the accent is going? That's a good news. 'Nilanjana' the voice artist did a pretty good job. I'll serialise the animation for viewing. That's for sure. Now, I may run into space problem. Please help me if you can. I'll mail you ddustin. The next part is here... The Character Design & Models of Hansel & Gretel : While designing the characters I tried to develop a specific look. Somewhere between claymation models and soft toys. The costumes are consulted from various books. Biswajit ‘Paul’ came up with the characters pretty quickly. I remember we got a little stuck on the witch design. But we got through it. Paul did a great work. Then it was my turn. I began modeling them. Starting from Hansel. I tried to develop on the style Paul maintained throughout the characters. I think the whole bunch took me maximum of 20 days. Meanwhile ‘Kheto’, my other artist, came up with the color chart for the characters. Characters are looking lovable. And that’s the point. Question : Do you find the characters inspired from something? We took lot of care to maintain originality. Is there anything we missed? I’ll discuss with the storyboard next.. Satyajit

Thanks Duke, I fixed the link. Please go and check it out. Satyajit

Hi all, "Hansel & Gretel", which is my second work is at my website www.satyajitchakraborty.com. This is an 30 mins animation of the famous tale. You can see (on my website) that I have conceived this movie as an musical rhyme. And the whole storyboard, piece of script and a snippet of the music with the voice are there for you. Question : Do you find the accent of the voice annoying? This is the documentation of the way this animation is being made. Everyone is welcome to comment and critic the arts and animation I am taking. It’s only your words that can make this animation a good one. I don’t really know how to put an animation WIP of the entire 30 mins of film online. I don’t have that amount of space available to me. So, I intend to upload first shots, then replace them with new ones. By this way I can use the same space of say 10 mb to show my entire movie. Alas, the old shots won’t be available. Question : Do you have a better solution? Not so long ago : The project of "Hansel & Gretel" was conceived middle of this year. But it was not until end of June that I started the actual animation. That time the models were almost finished, based upon excellent character designs by ‘Paul’. I have rigged (thanks to TSM2) and smartskinned most of them (except Witch) model. Some of them were still to be textured and secondary animation rigs are still to be perfected. But. by any means I wanted to start the animation. Other than the models I had already completed the sketchy storyboard. And, the unmixed track was in my hands. My artist friend ‘Kheto’ is already on the BGs. Yes, this is going to be another 2D set & 3D actors. I’m getting addicted to this technique. So, first of all I started laying off the storyboard on the voice + music track in Adobe Premier. Almost immediately I found my very brief storyboard was vastly inadequate for the animation. Anyway, I didn’t do the storyboard in extreme details because I wanted to finish it at one go. Staying in the moment. So, most of the acting work is going to be done during animation. I continued the animatic by repeating the storyboard shots, occasionally drawing new ones. The number of shots in “Hansel & Gretel” reached about 120. Present Day : At this date I’m on shot no. 75. The witch has entered the scene and she is a interesting character to animate. The animation of this movie is going to be somewhat between ‘limited’ and ‘keyframe packed’. I have to compromise but keeping the story alive. Please help me on this. My present daily routine is animate by day and render by night. I really have very limited processor power. You’ll laugh and fall off the chair if I tell you my PC configuration. Now : I’m posting the very first steps taken for “Hansel & Gretel”. The character designs. Next, will come the storyboard, then the finished model shots, the rig. Then the animations will follow. I’ll showcase the beautiful BGs too. Lastly I’ll delve into compositing the shots. Keep watching. Satyajit

See more of this project at my Website, production Shots, song, english translation and more. Satyajit

Thank you all, The red Termite is called 'Bruto' and the Green one 'Woodpeck'. The stupid dog like termite is 'Flopit'. And yes, they have big teeth !! Satyajit

[Thank you Timothy Albee, Makato Shinkai and every other independent filmmakers who don’t knock at the closed doors. They break through it.] Project : The Adventures of Sil and Twill This is a 21 min broadcast ready 3D-animation film done entirely by one person using one consumer grade PC with the help of a team of 3 painters. Though made in Kolkata, India, this film is primarily for US audience. The genre of this film is cartoon, not anime style. This film is done with a fresh new look and feel, featuring high flying action and comedy. This film is done with Hash Animation Master 11.1. Accesory softwares like Raf's 'The Setup Machine' are used. Other softwares like After Effects and Premiere are used for post production. The first trailer. http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=1087 Credits: Producers: Electrimage Original story: Satyajit Chakraborty Script: Satyajit Chakraborty and Electrimage Direction: Satyajit Chakraborty Voice Artists: Electrimage Modelling, Rigging, Storyboard, Animation, Compositing and Editing: Satyajit Chakraborty Background Painters: Chandan Mishra, Biswajit Paul, Soumitro Kheto Music and Sound Design: Electrimage & Ablu Chakraborty Contact informations: Electrimage : dchoudhuri@yahoo.com Satyajit Chakraborty : satyajit2000@sify.com [The purpose of this post is to release the information about this unique project and discuss the making of it.] Satyajit

On this note I'd like to introduce other artists working on this project alongside me. Chandan Misra : BG painting. Biswajit Paul : Pencils, character design. Soumitro Kheto : BG painting. Me: storyboards, character design, art direction, modelling, animation and compositing. Satyajit

Thank you, Well I'll continue to work on the BGs. I want to make it less brushy. Let's see. Satyajit