A trio making an animation short film as a student project! Winning 10 Awards and now nominated for the 11th one! So, what’s the wow factor that fills this team with so many awards?
Hues and shades of Indian culture blended with an animation mix can be one of the description for ‘Kaccho Gadulo’, the movie that was lauded at coveted animation fests for bringing out the story of the vibrant and diverse culture of India .Been on a winning spree since last year by nabbing a total of 10 awards and now in nomination for its 11th one at Bang Awards- Open Category, the movie for sure has raised the bar of Indian Animation.
A run down of the accolades won by this film are ASIFA India- Best animated student film award, 24FPS MAAC-Best animated film award, TASI 2012 viewer’s choice award- 2nd prize, Pune International Film Festival- Best animated student film National Award, Chennai Global shorts-Best animated Film award, International Cultural Exchange short film awards- 3rd place, Bit film festival.-3rd place, The International Broke Student Film Festival, Michigan, USA- Best film, Jury’s choice, The International Broke Student Film Festival, Michigan, USA, Best film- Viewer’s choice. National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) Seattle, USA- Best animation film- Jury’s choice, Josiah Media Awards, San Antonio- Best animated film, TBS Digicon awards, Tokyo, Japan- Nominated and screened as part of India’s five selected films, Jaipur International Film Festival- Nominated for best student film award, FICCI FRAMES film festival- Nominated for Best animated film, Chicago Cine Youth film festival, Chicago, USA- Nominated for best animated student film award.
Created as a graduation project by trio, Saptesh Chaubal, Pranay Patwardhan and Shivangi Ranawat, the movie was first released last year at the D.S.K. Supinfocom Campus and since then the film has been lauded for its characters, story graph and supremely for its climax.
For this team, creating this movie has been a passion project rather than a compulsion of completing the grad assignment. The trio loves watching and studying animation movies and are constantly curious to experiment and they feel that if the goals of each team member meet well, then successes like these are a sure thing.
Expressing thoughts with Animationxpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala on being nominated at Bang Awards, Saptesh, Pranay, Shivangi, share, “This nomination came as a huge surprise. Bang Awards saw the film, some of our work on Vimeo and invited us to send our entry to the festival. We are thrilled and feel honored”
Sharing on the story line, the trio, shares, “Kachho Gadulo” is a tribute to folk cultures of India and was made to bring out the local essence of different cultures and music through a simple story where vibrant and diverse culture of India is seen through a young child’s free and beautiful imagination.”
‘Kaccho Gadulo’ is a Rajasthani term for ‘Little Gypsy.’ The team researched about exotic Indian locations and then instilled the most eye appealing aspects in this film.
They add more, “The inspiration for creating the movie became stronger day by day as we researched into different folk elements of India.
The team was completely carried away by the Indian art including the metal sculptures of Chhattisgarh named the “Dhokras”, the warli paintings of Maharashtra, beautiful color combinations and patterns of the tribal textile, vibrant and expressive masks from different cultures bearing a strong sense of art were the most important areas that we researched on and chosen to bring out in the movie.
Initially, the trio was filled with various concepts and story lines to create this film but then they decided to go in for a story line carrying Indian grace,
“We shared all our concepts with one another and filtered them by creating story boards and Animatics, which gave us an idea of what worked and what needed to be better. We had many good ideas and had to revise, edit and change them to keep the integrity of the film and we believe that our ideas and conflicts worked for the betterment of the movie.”
It has taken a year for the team to complete the short film and they jumpstarted the work on the movie by firstly crafting the basic story line, characters and relationships between the protagonists and then went ahead to deal with the production of the movie.
The mood setting and the locations of this movie are inspired by the tribal and folk culture of various parts of India including Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala.
For making pre-production smoother, the trio created a well timed movie edit including the camera angles, which in turn gave them a complete idea of the flow of the movie.
There is always a motive behind choosing a story line, so let’s hear more about this aspect from the trio and they say, “We felt that folklore has been diminishing with passing time and so we chose this concept to promote Indian culture and art and take it to an international level.”
3D animation has been formulated to bring out the entire short film and the team nods to the thought that the medium helped them with abundant options for creating the mood and fuse the reality and virtual world into a genuine art. Software’s, Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Aftereffects, Adobe Premier were roped in the making for the movie.
A most important challenge that the team asserts was infusing a large number of Indian elements in a short film format.
Adds more,” The flow of the story and blending of the characters into world was reworked constantly until we all settled for what we imagined.”
The team researched on artworks of various artists for prepping character designs and were inspired by arts ‘Handmade in India’ by Aditi Ranja and M P Ranjan, ‘Indi-Folk” by M.S. Lehri and ‘Tibetan Art’ by Lokesh Chandra whereas for animating the fighting sequences in the movie, the references were taken from Kalaripayattu martial arts, Chinese theatre and mask dance, Bengal’s Chhau Dance, Kathakali dance forms and Mahakala Dance during the Sikkim Festival.
Challenges that were needed treatment on the technical front were render bugs and large durations of render time and as a wide range of moods, atmosphere’s had to be shown in the film, it did require a lot of retouching and they consider the shots of the boat, the snake and the fight at the end as the must watch shots of this movie.
Adds further, “We created varied moods of realistic and fantasy genre and creating this was quite challenging but really fun and we feel that these shots are the vital key moments in the film and needed to be strong, both visually and story wise to keep the audience excited.”
The trio feels that the most challenging shot to crack was the choreography of the fight sequences, informs more, “For animating this sequence we three have fought with sticks, flying kicks, performed random fighting scenarios and blocked, reverse attacked and finally nailed the animation. Sometimes the most complex things can be achieved by the simplest ways. Through various tests and planning at various stages we ensured that rendering was a smooth and enjoyable process.”
On the concluding note, the team would like to extend heartfelt thanks to, “Jeremy Delchiappo our trainer who was a constant driving force to all of us throughout the project and a friend, mentor and our critic, Janmeet Singh, who helped us during the difficult times of animation and handled the sound designing for the film, Ameya Naik for doing a brilliant job on the background score of the short film, Nikita Deshpande for making excellent credits for the film, Shashank Dhongde, a student and our VFX advisor.”
You can view this movie in the Bang Awards Category by clicking here http://www.bang-awards.com/en/tema-livre/2