Rahul Punyani, a Delhi based Arena Animation academy, Rajouri Garden student’s short ‘Virtual Thought’ was screened at ‘ANIFEST INDIA 2013’ and was awarded the ‘Student Category Award’.
AnimationXpress.com interacted with Rahul Punyani to know more about the making of the short.
How did you get interested in animation?
Since childhood, I used to watch the cartoon series of ‘Mickey Mouse’ and create sketches of the character. As I grew up, I got interested in watching cartoon series, animation movies and drew those character stick figures in my book. This hobby helped me discover my interest in the field of Animation.
Which was your first Animation movie that you experimented with?
Before joining Arena Animation, I decided to first experiment by making a 1 minute movie on toy cars. As I could not afford to use high tech software or any other device, I made the toy car movie using my mobile camera and edited the video frame by frame.
How did you come up with the concept of ‘Virtual Thought’?
One of the reasons for coming up with this concept is my love for action movies like ‘Avengers’ and ‘Avatar’. As there’s always a common conversation among animation students that particular software is better than the other one. Hearing individual preferences on daily basis, I decided to put life in the software and make the software appreciate themselves. I made up my mind to bring up the fighting sequence between ‘3D Studio Max’ and ‘Adobe After Effects’ filled with action and fun throughout the 2 minutes 20 second movie. I created the environment for this movie in such a way that would make the viewers think and guess about the responses of the two software. The two software ‘3D Studio Max’ and ‘Adobe After Effects’ are the main characters in this movie. By the end of this project, I just wanted my viewers to give it a thought that if these software’s had life in them, would these two software work together or fight with each other?
Who is the targeted audience for this short film?
Even though the concept was clear in my mind, I was puzzled as to how to decide one specific group of people, as I didn’t want a niche group of viewers as such. To sort out this confusion, I decided to make this movie for viewers of all age groups. The 3D characters are designed in the form of robots. These two software have specifically been given the robot structure to help the viewers who are not tech savvy also get entertained by hearing the dialogues between ‘3D Studio Max’ and ‘Adobe After Effects.
What challenges did you face in the making of the short?
The shot in which several particles had to form into a car within few seconds was tricky. It took me around 15 days thinking about how to make this possible. The rendering software crashed while editing this shot. And as I didn’t want to compromise with the quality of this movie, I ended up using Cinema 4D software for the same.I used three software for this movie, namely 3 D Max Software was used for Modeling the characters, After Effects for the composition and Cinema 4D software for the sequence.
The time period spent on this movie?
It took a total of 10 months to complete the movie. A whole month passed by in the process of creating and developing the look of the softwares.15 days in deciding the storyline and 7 months in the production and post production of this project .Continuous efforts made me complete the movie in September 2012 and submitted it to Arena Animation Academy in Mid December 2012. This movie wouldn’t have been possible without Rohan Arora who did the Voice Over, Amanpreet Kaur, who created the 3D Models of buildings in the movie.
Are you planning for a sequel of this short?
Yes, I have decided to continue this story. In the future episodes of this movie, I will include other software as characters along with ‘3D Max’ and ‘Adobe After Effects.
Adding more with regards to the performance of Rahul Punyani in Arena Animation Academy, Seema Verma, Director, Arena Animation Academy Rajouri Garden, Delhi, says, ‘We are incredibly proud of our student Rahul Punyani for his success at TASI’s Anifest India 2013.”