animation reel, finally!

[2012 UPDATE: If you wish to see this version of my animation reel, the password is "reel2010". Please note that this is NOT the current version of my animation demo reel. Please see the Videos page of this blog for my most recent reels. Thank you!]

I've finally put together an animation reel now that my student film, Dissonance, is done. This is my first edit, including shots from both Dissonance and Bhava Raga Tala, that my teachers liked the best.

Although, both my teachers have suggested that I should just send in my complete films for internships instead of chopping them off into a reel. Either way, comments are welcome!

expression. music. rhythm.

Bhava Raga Tala from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

My one quarter film from sophomore year! Finally! Took me 10 weeks to do- I based it off of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance form that makes use of sculpturesque poses. Natyam means dance, and Bharata is derived from the Sanskrit words, bhava, raga and tala which literally means expression, music and rhythm. The film was screened at the High Street Film Festival in Rochester.

I like how it turned out, but it wasn't as challenging as I would have liked it to be. (Hail the two-quarter!)

But here's what Bharatanatyam is actually like, so you can see what exactly I experimented with. I used the poses to match up with a different kind of music not traditionally used for this kind of a dance.

festivities

This weekend I was back at Rochester for my first film festival! Bhava Raga Tala got selected for The High Street Film Festival that was held this June 12 at the Dryden Theater in George Eastman House.

This is the first time the festival is being held, and it was started by Matthew and Kate Murphy. Here's an article about it (read it! I'm featured in it too!).

My film was the only animation out of the 11 films that were screened, but it was a great experience. I got to talk to other student filmmakers and some professionals, and my film was received well!

I also started my internship last Wednesday at Humble TV. I know I'll be learning a lot during my time here, but at this moment, I am very intimidated because I am new to some of the software and techniques and I need to self-teach a lot of these things to give these people the right output in the right amount of time. My first three days, I rotoscoped. This is my first time rotoscoping and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Humble TV is working on motion graphics for the 2010 ESPY's right now so it involves rotoscoping athletes and putting them in different environments. My first rotoscoping was Shaun White doing one of his tricks. I'm excited to get my feet wet in some compositing, and hopefully, a lot of new 3D stuff.

Apart from that, my summer's been pretty static. Doing some animating in Maya and hoping to be able to write at least one more children's poem like I did last summer. Maybe it'll inspire me for my 2-quarter too.

Also, I have an IMDb page now for Bhava Raga Tala. :)

spring, a few words about

Another year has come to an end, and as always, there's been a flurry of activities. It seems to be a trend at the closing of every Spring quarter.

So, to back up a little- my 10-week animation project, popularly known as the "one-quarter", was completed, screened with good feedback from the faculty at the quarterly screenings, and selected for the School of Film & Animation's (SoFA) Honor's Show to be taking place in Fall next year.

Two days ago, I turned 19 and took charge of my own decisions. I had received an e-mail from the chairperson of SoFA informing me that the faculty members had decided to nominate me to be the undergraduate representative for the National Princess Grace Foundation Award in the Film category. I was tremendously excited. On further research, found out that this award award was meant for thesis films, and furthermore, the deadline for sending DVDs, treatments & proposals, script summaries, pre-production samples, bios, and other paperworks was in 10 days.

I emailed the chair about it and he informed me that the award could be applicable for any advanced project I would be doing next year (not just for a thesis) and that I should let him know immediately if I wished to decline. Had I been doing a thesis next year, it would have been an ideal opportunity, because by that time, I would have had a solid idea at hand, the pre-planning stage would have been rolling, and I would have a lot more samples to send exemplifying my work under my belt.

But next year, I will be working on my "two-quarter" (20-week project), and unlike my thesis, I do not have an entire academic quarter before this project is to be started, to seriously mull on the ideas being catapulted around my head, polishing the idea, etc. Instead, I have 10 days, if I am to apply for this award. As I've mentioned before I think, pre-production and ideation is the most important and most difficult part for me, and unless I can completely marry myself to my idea, I cannot work with it- be it 10 weeks, 20 weeks or an entire year.

If I were to come up with a 2-quarter idea in 10 days, send all the supporting materials and possibly win the award, I would have to be committed to this idea for the next 20 weeks that I would be spending working on it. I would have run the risk of hating an idea I spewed out in that small span of time and jeopardizing one of my three important projects during my time in college. The quality of my work is important to me and I didn't want to potentially sacrifice that by applying for the award. I wasn't afraid of the deadline. I was afraid of what the outcome of winning the award would be.

It was an especially hard decision for me to make, saying no, because my parents and my friends who knew about it were quite vocally against it. But I thought long and hard about it, and decided to forego the opportunity. It was a privilege being presented with the choice, and for me, all that matters is that I am recognized in my school as being capable.

I must say, making huge decisions like these in such short time can drain you of a lot of energy. Especially when you have to spend the rest of the day packing all your belongings and all the junk that accumulated in your room over the year and move out.


This quarter has been amazing. I've met new people, shared new ideas, earned an interview with Pixar at such an early stage in my career (even though it didn't work out in the end) and got many other valuable interview experiences.. I'm excited about what's to come.

Now I'm home, aching from lugging heavy things around. Will take a day or two off before diving into more work. Film festivals. Scholarships. CLEP. Internship. Translating. Animation practice. And ruminating over ideas for my next film. It has to be twice as good, now that I've made such a big deal about spending time on pre-planning.

Happy summer!

what if i did THIS...

Still animating. My plan now is to finish the remaining 20 seconds in the next two weekends. Then spend the rest of the time (3 weeks) fixing all the animations that need to be fixed and editing the thing.

So here's the new stuff:

And I was just experimenting with editing styles with the last clip, so it saves me some time when I actually formally start editing:

Floo

So I guess I can say that I have officially started animating for this project. Am I happy with what I am animating? No. I've been really sick with some sort of viral flu for the past 4 or 5 days and now is not the time. People are out frolicking in the apparently warm weather and I am still parading around in my winter jacket.



I really hope that I develop a proper style quickly in the process of animating this. I can make beautiful individual abstract drawings of Bharata Natyam dancers, but once I start animating and get a couple of frames into it, the figures start to resemble "beautiful and abstract" less. It's one of the challenges I have to overcome for this project, I suppose.

I really like the drawing style I have in my Figure Drawing class, and it's probably because I'm using charcoal, and also maybe because I'm drawing big. I don't know if I would be able to animate with something like charcoal/pastels, but I really want to try. The thing is, I don't know if I have the time to experiment anymore. Right now, literally whatever I animate has to be in the final film. I guess this is one of the problems of making a complete film from pre- to post- production in 10 weeks. There is so much scope for learning, but not much for going back and perfecting from what you learn.

But anyway, what I have above is what I've done since the last update, quickly put together. It isn't exactly what the final film will look like, but it hints heavily at it.

We'll see..

Hello Hello, Testing Testing...

I figured I'd start experimenting. It's better if I figure out potential problems with animating at this stage rather than later.

This is a quick AfterEffects test I did. It wasn't shot properly because I need someone to teach me how to use the scanner in our lab. The drawings I did today were supposed to be rough and for experimenting, but I might end up using it in the end. So I didn't want to risk batch scanning the papers without any training with the scanner and having it eat all the paper up.

Not sure how I feel about the animation though.




Will post more details about the project later.