GIF day

jiggy cookie

Trying to keep up with my GIF inputs on this blog. Work takes up so much time that it becomes impossible to be able to complete one per day!
I feel this inability to work on something everyday gives me more motivation to actually do something whenever i get the time.

Thanks for watching!

Contemplating a 100 day thing

It so happens that today was one of those days where i end up discovering something which'll probably have me hooked for a while. Until i fail at it miserably or it reaches a sense of saturation.

This discovery happens to be something so insignificant that i can't believe i did not try it myself!
I'll cut to the meaty part, so it's basically using illustrator to create a character whose attributes are sectioned into layers. Now importing this project file into After Effects and manipulating the layers to create a desirable movement.

You can find the video i referenced here! colourful language has been used... ALOT!

dance away little watermelon!

Now coming to the contemplating part, there have been the hashtags going about regarding a 100 day challenge or so and i'm not sure if i should do it.
Perhaps start with 14 days and move up? Step by step might seem less daunting.

Lets see how the days progress!

Summit 38

The weekend which passed was Comic Con Bangalore weekend for me and possibly one of the better weekends i've had since coming here. In all the rush, updating obviously did not take place and neither did rendering the summit happen as planned.

I'll keep this post limited to just the summit as the weekend definitely needs better coverage!


Speaking of the summit, personally it was one of the harder ones, or maybe confusing ones because i did lose track at many points which led to me writing down after effect tips in my small notebook.
I keep going back to the notebook when i fear that i've forgotten what i learnt.

The output i managed isn't exactly (there's a big jump right there when the flap unfolds) as smooth towards the end fold as was shown in the tutorial but i'll leave that for another day.

Summit 38

Thanks for watching!

Graduation!

I never thought I'd be making this post! I'm graduating next week and it's been a crazy 2014.
Around the time I was in Sikkim, I was mentally preparing myself for the worst case scenario wherein I don't graduate this year. It was scary because I had no idea when I'd finish my film or any animation work for that matter.
 
When I look back at that chunk of time, I'm so glad that I made a promo for my film as well as a redone animatic. It felt like everything fell into place because of some magical force but if I sit and closely recall, I was glued to my lightbox, laptop and chair for a good amount of time before I was sure I could go back to college and apply for a graduation jury date. The whole experience was surreal and now that it's done I can safely say it was fun as well!

My full film is about 3 minutes 50 seconds long of which I made a promo of the shots I found  exciting! If it weren't for my guide Sekhar Mukherjee, I doubt I'd have anything substantial to show at all. Head on over to Behance and have a look at the promo and a few illustrations as well!

Here's the link for the Behance project!

http://bit.ly/1HUxhmf

lets animate...

When i first joined the animation discipline in college, i was probably excited beyond repair and was imagining some crazy Miyazaki wonders to instantly erupt from my pencils. But gosh was i wrong, without any prior training in drawing and having self learnt most of my life, i was petrified. Never did i find a blank piece of paper so intimidating and never did i loathe drawing so much.

Yes, we started with the basic bouncing ball and went on to hammers and axes, slowly progressing to walk cycles and scarves waving in the air. Animating is certainly no child's play and i realized soon enough why my seniors would warn us everyday when they saw us with our light boxes in the studio.

It's a tough journey ahead, and now even in my fourth year, i still struggle with many many things which seem almost impossible to animate.
I had made this illustration out of frustration one day when our coordinator Sekhar Mukherjee was dismissing all our hammer animations.

A small and very old test animation i made just for fun when i was bored. More catty animations in the future i hope!

Parachute cat from Aakanksha Mittra on Vimeo.

making words move

So there was 3rd year of animation where we had a course called "motion typography" we were firstly given a famous personality whose essence we had to convey with the help of movement, i chose Monroe. Secondly we had to choose from three movies and make a whole new title sequence for it. I , being such a sucker for Audrey hepburn chose to take up 'My Fair Lady'


Motion Typography from Aakanksha Mittra on Vimeo.