mododevidagoa

[mododevidagoa]

Covid 19, more popularly known as the ‘current situation’ these days, threw the production in a tizzy for a while before I got back in a stable mindset. A large number of shots for the film are by now painted and ready to be composited together with the backgrounds.  

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The drawings were then transferred to a tablet which would work as a lightbox to trace the frames onto. Some cloth binded clips to attach a sheet, peg bars registered onto the tablet for aligning and the frames were ready to be painted.

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Select few shots that went through the rough edit were animated digitally frame by frame. The animation process used for the film was a mix of digital and traditional animation wherein the lines were animated digitally and each frame would later be painted traditionally. This was done in order to get the idea of movement immediately while animating, merging the strengths of digital to traditional.

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A few thumbnails from the storyboard process. Cutting the hours long interviews into a few minutes for the short film, a simple image board was created as a starting point for the narrative. Reflecting the many threads about a 100 thumbnails were created in no specific order.

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Img1- Anjali Dar Sengupta, Aniruddha Sengupta, Aarina Alphonso and Delson Roche  (L to R) the interviewees

Img2- A scribble drawn while interviewing

I’d decided on taking a few interviews with friends who had stayed in Goa for slightly longer than I had. It was important for me that the interviewees were not local dwellers or had lived in Goa for far too long. What I wanted to capture was the freshness one appreciates in a relatively new surrounding / culture before one loses the eye or sense for it. Also being in a similar state myself, I wanted to compound on my own experiences of the life here. Human experiences start becoming jaded beyond a time and it was important for me to make this film while they were still fresh.

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The idea originated from my practice of keeping visual journals over the last several years. Small sketches sometimes quickly colored in with scribbly notes describing the day and place. Visual journals are great recording tools for observation and revisiting events and feelings for years down the line. More journals with notes here for the interested peeps.

After many many sketches, I had the urge to bring them together in a cohesive piece that would further enrich the feeling of the place in my personal memory. Idea was to create a film-sketchbook of sorts that serves the same purpose but more immersive through people’s perspectives, motion, sound and music.

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Modo De Vida – A Goan Sketchbook

It was in 2016 that I first arrived in Goa, straight out of design school, mind full of myriad possibilities. Not wanting to live in a city, we took our chances, me, my partner Supriya alongwith our campus dog Foxy. Ahmedabad to Goa within a week of graduating. It is 2020, many roller coaster months turned to years and in these ups and downs, highs and lows, I’ve constantly found myself feeling fortunate to be in the gentle presence of the place I’ve inhabited. The dewy mornings, the bells, the crimson sunsets, the vast fields, the spirited people and the amazing food have created a nest, surrounding me with a comfortable warmth. I’ve been in love with the place and from the need to express this joy I started working on an animated short film about 8 months back.