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We Should Talk More Often

Its the middle of the pandemic, a boy stands on his window its almost his birthday and all he can do is look at the corona monsters partying outside.

4 mins | India | 2021 Production: National Institute of Design/self produced Direction: Saiyam Marwah

We Should Talk More Often

Its the middle of the pandemic, a boy stands on his window its almost his birthday and all he can do is look at the corona monsters partying outside.

4 mins | India | 2021 Production: National Institute of Design/self produced Direction: Saiyam Marwah

The idea

The idea of this film started in the midst of the pandemic, when all of us were trapped in our houses, and there was a sense of fear and uncertainty. I wanted to create a film that showcases a collective sense of belonging in this climate.


The idea of this film started in the midst of the pandemic, when all of us were trapped in our houses, and there was a sense of fear and uncertainty. I wanted to create a film that showcases a collective sense of belonging in this climate.

In this climate of isolation, everyone was trying to figure out how to stay connected with their loved ones, so I decided to pick from my own life the feeling of celebrating your birthday but not having anyone around to celebrate it with.

Initial Drawings

With the initaial drawings of the character I tried to understand the friend group. A lot of inspiration for the characters and their traits was taken from my real life friends. Since it was an ensemble, I started associating certain shapes with the personalities of these characters and leaned heavily on it.

Story Structure

Parallely I was doing various drafts of the story and around the 4th draft I created a pacing chart. This helped determine the key essential moments I needed to cover to convey the story. I also created a 25 panel breakdown of the entire film,.

For shorter film projects, I prefer to jump straight into the animatics as this helps in forming the timing at an early stage. I did some basic sound design and the initial runtime of the film came up to be around 2 min 45 seconds.

Character Design

To keep the duration of the film in check the character line was changed from four to three friends and Corona Monster was added as the fourth character. Each character had a shape and color assigned to them based on their personalities.

After colour was fixed I created a turntable to get a better understanding of volume for the characters, since apart from the covid monsters all of them were going to be hand drawn 2d animated. I also created character sheets for each of them.

The covid monster was a 3d character, here is the character rig I created for it. The face expressions and blinks were drawn using Grease Pencil.

Style frames

Some style frames for each of the characters and their house settings. Mintu is the only one alone, even Kittu has her dog with her.

Building the sets

To create the rooms I modelled them based on the actual rooms of my friends. I tried out this technique where the entire room was hand drawn but in 3d space using grease pencil. This lets you control the lighting while also painting details.

Here is an in-depth video explaining the process.

Animation

The animation was done traditionally frame by frame. the only difference was the animation layers were 2d planes in a 3d space, that meant there was freedom interns of camera movement.

There were three passes of line animation, with rough lines, white fill and then final line animation with colour.

A video explaining the whole process.

Title Design

The title design was done by a graphic designer friend, Sheen. I modelled his illustration in 3d so the title could be incorporated within the film.

Film Stills
Festival Rounds

The film went around the festival circuit for 2022 and was well received, it also helped me meet new folks and collaborate with them.

© 2024 SAIYAM MARWAH - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED