Mobile phones: A short animation film

Mobile phones have given rise to characters and situations, which make an interesting subject of study.
The project aims at making an humourous animation film which circles around such people.
The final output would be a CG animated (2d or 3d) short film
(approximately 1 to 5 mins. in duration).

The project was to make a game cinematic for a game named Road rebels® which is being developed by game studio at Milestone Interactive. “Road rebels” is a combat racing title in which you race and fight your way through four cities to become the unchallenged numero uno brawler/rider in the world.

3d Studio Max from Discreet was used for modeling all the characters as well as the vehicles and environment. The method used for modeling was polygonal modeling with mesh smoothing applied over it. After modeling and suitable mapping coordinates applied to the model, the unwrapped image of the mesh was imported to Photoshop to paint textures over it.

Animation was done using 3d Studio MAX ® and character studio ®. Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, were used for final video editing and additional effects. Sony Vegas was used for sound editing and final rendering.

For this project, research was carried out for all characters as well as their vehicles and the environment. The characters in the game are bikers who race for thrill and money.

Also, as an individual, they come from a particular region of the West, have their own likes and dislikes, and are into a particular kind of profession. All the features of a particular class of characters were studied which included the body structure, hairstyle they have, the clothes, accessories, footwear which they wear to get the look of the character.

Also the characters ride a particular genre of bikes which can be broadly classified into sportsbike, hotrods and muscle bikes. All the bikes have custom looks with different graphics on them. A whole lot of reference images of bikes and custom graphics were collected and studied to get the perfect match for a character. Some scale models of bikes were also used as references for modeling and texturing.

Study of Manga (Japanese Comic Book) Techniques

Manga is one of the most well-known and respected types of publications in Japan . The pictoral art that is manga has garnered as much clout as even novels and magazines in the Japanese culture, and manga takes up a fair amount of the publishing "pie" each year. Even though entertainment takes many different forms these days, lots of people are still avid manga readers. This begs the question "why"? Why is it that a simple black and white publication of pictures is so popular?

One way of answering this question thoroughly is to look at the origins and background of manga. How did it start? Who were the key figures in making it what it is today? What happened that made it such a popular form of written/pictoral expression? This paper is a sincere effort to answer some of these questions.

"SIZE DOES NOT MATTER"

This short claymation was done as a part of a show reel for BANG Animation Studios.

The idea was to convey the message that though it is a very small place, still they are capable of producing high quality work.