A HO NA
Concept Artist and Illustrator
HOJOBOROLO
A mix of 2D, Stop Motion, Cut-out animation and Live action
Initially we planned to work on a subject that we were already familiar with, something close to our culture. That made me think- may be I could work on something that defined me or a atleast a part of me.
After quite a bit of introspection, I was quite intrigued by the remembering the stories I grew up listening to. They were mostly dinner time and lunch time stories that my grandmothers told me. While I was juggling with multiple stories of movies that I could work with, HoJoBoRoLo stood out. It is a noncensical novel by Shukumar Ray. The sheer fact that it is based off on a young child’s dream, made me feel that I would have a lot of freedom to work my way through it.
TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS
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CLIPS FROM HOJOBOROLO
Planning
-At first I was settled with the idea that I would work on experimental animation. However, I had a very shallow idea regarding that. However, after a lot of discussion we did lock on the idea of using mixed medium for animation, namely- stop motion, 2D, cut out and live action.
-The reason being, there are multiple change in scenes with a lot of character introduction and growth. So we divided the scenes according to the scene development.
-Then we finally started. Lucky for us, we had a senior visiting faculty- Andy Joule, come and mentor us, on the stop motion aspect of the film. Jasbinder Sir and vivek sir planned the entire pre production with our team.
uWe started with making concept art (which essentially took a lot of time, since we were making designs for animatable stop motion characters) the after we finalized the concepts we started working on the set and model. I have given an example in the following slide.
Fighting Deadline!
-By the time we came closer to our deadline, our mentors advised us to that we should start the post work simultaneously AND start live action as well. So now our team was divided into stop motion aniamtors, live action dept. and the post prodection dept. It did sound like the perfect plan but we had extremely hard time communicating constantly.
-However, the work load did get reduced, and as we started finishing more work in shorter period of time we also got motivated.
-However, we were still far away from bridging the gap. But we are still going on. And I think that’s what matters. The reason to actually finish the movie, just because we want to. Now we actually wanted to finish what we started.
Challenges Faced
Soon enough, we started facing a lot of challenges.
-We were on an impossible timeline. The script ran upto 12 minutes on our first draft. We were asked to cut it down to 3 minutes. Yes! 3! (we did not)
-Management was a huge issue. Working on such a huge set! With a team of over 20 students! It was a first time for all of us. We had to cover up and work over lot of mistakes and miscalculations.
-Language barrier. This was a huge issue. We were really bent on staying true to the story so we made the audio in Bengali and there was hardly 3 of us (including vivek sir) who new Bengali.
-By the time we started with the stop motion scene we were still not clear about the 2d and live action scene. We had not worked with mixed medium to this much depth. Measurements and lighting became a huge issue.
-We kept delaying certain shots because we wanted to get over with the stop motion first, which screwed up our timeline even further.
-We were also originally planning to do pixilation, but we understood how tough it was to work with a child actress or any human for that matter.
-We also had issues with clarity among the team because the rest of the crew was involved quite late (im glad though that they were involved, I could not have done this alone). This made me learn how important it is to have a proper meeting with the whole crew and how everyone should be constantly updated at every stage.
-This was also our first time working with a completely new dept. (A huge thanks to the VFX Dpt) The VFX dept handles the entire post, helped by Prayag. However, they too were involved quite (very) late into our project, and they literaaly had no idea what the film was about until a few weeks ago. Again, important rule, always have clarity within the team and keep everyone updated. Especially considering the fact that the team had their own projects as well.
-Clash within the team was also a very common, and natural thing, but I think the worse part is not being able to live upto our own expectations.
-Even though, there have been moments we have questioned each other if it was at all realistic, taking up such a huge project. I would never choose otherwise. We have gained immence experience and knowledge.
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NOTE
This project would have been impossible without the help and resource of the School of Animation of Whistling Woods School of Animation. I would like to specially thank Mr. Yusuf Mehta, Animation Dept. HOD, for making this happen. The whole project would have been impossible without the help of our mentor and Faculty members Vivek Nag and Jasbinder Singh. Lastly, I would like to thank Mr. Andy Joule for the amazing Stop motion work shop. We have learned a lot through our last Semester, mostly, the importance of Team Work.
I have been extremely lucky to have been able to work with students from all the semesters of Animation Dept.
I am immensely thankful to Mr. Kshitif Sharma and the whole of 2nd semester VFX dept. for continuing the Post Production work.Â
It has truly been an honor to work as a director and concept artist for this film.
Stay tuned for the finishing of HoJoBoRoLo by August!