Session 90 summary
Prasun made his NID film, which was inspired from the Santhal community. He did his schooling from Purulia and he used to hear the dhamsamadol and chonas and the santhal dance music from his hostel rooms. When he was doing this film the main thing he noticed was that they are a community based group and this was one of his learnings from these communities (because he travels a lot and interacts with different communities). He states that there is an urban life where the form is very important- every individual form is very beautiful, very unique, it has to stand out and then there is another way of life where it is not the beauty of that one particular form, one individual form but small little forms bring their own thing but in unison they make a pattern. So, when they make a pattern and that is because of the dependence/interdependence on each other in their lifestyle, in their way of life, livelihood, everything. That interdependence which also includes nature- it is not like intruding, creating something forcefully which would stand out. What he drew from the film is that Prasun likes their teamwork, he doesn’t want to sit in a corner and do work by himself and so he is drawn to stuff where there is teamwork, where there is a lot of people working on something, with material, interacting with each other, interacting with material, interacting with the space. In this process there is music, there is dance, etc.
Prasun says that animation is very solitary process- it is a grey world where one creates boxes in office boxes, which Prasun didn’t like. Prasun used to do a lot of storyboard, he attempted the storyboard for Valley of Flowers and his storyboard got selected and so he went to Leah in the middle of a huge crew and setup which was something he missed when he was doing animation, i.e.; breath-taking location, huge team, everybody working towards one vision and people handling material which showed huge teamwork- fighting with physical stuff, etc. Since it was a period film, there were horses, there were props, guns, etc. and the art department was building those things and whatever Prasun was sketching the people were building those things right in front of him. At that time Prasun was visualising for films, creating visuals, creating stories, creating objects, etc. things that come together. Prasun likes both the storytelling part as well as visualising part as much as the building and making part of it because it is a very physical process; ‘you interact, go to locations and you improvise on the day’, that spirit is something which Prasun prefers.
Prasun co-founded the character art studio and named it Offish which is Office in the Bengali accent, and Prasun kept the fish logo because he knew from day one that it wouldn’t be the normal office space instead he would be doing some work which would provide him his fish (meal), with the simple happiness of making things, creating things with his team with their own hands. That was how he gradually landed where he is currently. When Prasun studied animation he wanted to put life into his drawings, but when he came out of college, animation was not about drawing anymore- it was a grey maya environment which he personally didn’t enjoy. Then he realised that even today there is a lot that is going on inside screens- the world inside the screen could be anything- it is magical but the moment one takes their eyes off the screen the world is pretty drab but technology has advanced so much that the physical tactile world can also be very lively, they could be telling stories to others. It is not just that the stories have to be told by audio visual means, there are other ways of experiencing stories, there are other ways of interacting with characters and there are other ways of interacting with situations. So, Prasun thought that he would probably enjoy that part where there is a bit of physicality, there is a bit of narrative, there is a bit of visualization and there is a bit of actual physical working with the hands and exploring materials and processes etc. So, they shifted from storyboard to T.V. Prasun also wanted to get into art direction and production design and by the time he went to Bombay, he was too old to be an assistant and he probably didn’t have the temperament of a good assistant. So, he tried a different way and because he was doing a lot of storyboards, concept art and the visualizations where there is one to one direct interaction between directors, where some rapport was built. The art department is a very heavy expensive department, Prasun used to do a lot of storyboards for ad films. Ad films are of one or two day shoot and the art department is very expensive and so it is very difficult to trust someone new in that field, that is why people generally tend to not try newer people for art direction. They do try but with somebody who has worked as assistant under other art directors and know them personally, so gradually the rapport builds and so people would still believe that person rather than someone new who doesn’t have the experience. Luckily because of the one to one interaction with the directors where they saw Prasun’s visualization skills and his keenness, they gradually started giving him few small films. It started out like that and with time they started trusting Offish more and allowing them to take up art direction of those sets but they had to gradually completely stop storyboarding. As they started building sets and stuffs and props, they realised that there are very few – they have a knack to find the problem areas- they find it and then they try to adapt that- they sense an opportunity in that and solve it. They realised that there are no specialised prop makers in Bombay. When a producer or director breaks down the script they know exactly where the prop-making shops are, there the prop-shops are the ones which collect the tables and chairs, lampshades, sofas, etc. but they do not make anything as such. So, if anything has to be made, the producer has to think how to do that, choosing each material and where they can get it from, etc. There was a serious lack of prop making shops where they can just give a brief of the prop like; what is the use of the prop in the film? What are the scenes? And then the shop would come up with the material and the process on how to make it. This greatly worked for Prasun’s team, so wherever there would be a specialised prop, even in his own films where he was doing the production design and they would like that quality but would not get it in India (for everything of quality they had to go abroad) and most of the times there is no time or budget for that because ad films work on a very short turnaround schedule. Gradually they decided to give it a shot, they went out of their way to pick up different things- it was quite foolish as they were taking things on their shoulders and sometimes they were successful and sometimes it ended in a failure. But they were taking that risk. With time it started sounding very interesting.
Recently they made the astras for the film Brahmastra- which had to look like they were made out of stone but since the actors had to wear them it had to be comfortable to be worn, super lightweight, illuminated because without the actual illumination the VFX would look fake. Nobody knew how to get that, they knew what they wanted but not how to do it, even the team didn’t know how. That is where the exploration started and what happens with these kinds of projects is that the production company has the money so they invest in the RnD and since Prasun’s team does the RnD there is a big learning in the process- with each experiment they learn something about different materials, processes and various other things. The making of the wearable props starts with the clay work on a live cast of the feet, then comes the explorations and when the design gets finalised they start the material selection process, in the process they made around 20-30 different versions of a single wearable prop even before the design was finalised. These kinds of explorations/ material explorations is something which Prasun’s team enjoys but the amount of learning that had happened on that project helped them immensely in their other things, so the by-products of the failures are immensely helpful. Whatever they do, whatever they attempt to do and if they succeed at the first attempt then it is counterproductive because then there is no extra learning from it. When one fails then there is a lot of learning then you are trying to correct within a time frame.
The importance of animatronics in films is much less now but still there are a lot of things, probably because there is VFX also and they know how it works and that is why Offish gets to do most of that stuff.
The projects they work on are always a good fun and most of the times they would do something that they have never done before. So, they get to do all crazy and unique work through crazy mediums, they have to figure out mediums, mechanisms, mostly it is about figuring things from scratch. A person skills-up in each project and not just use only one skill they know for all the projects, this helps in any storytelling aspect- one needs to communicate an image, an emotion, when you extend it, it becomes their training ground- all these skills have more applications on the physical zone which is of museums – experiential zones of amusement parks, events museums, storytelling- people have their mobile screens and they are watching something or the other throughout the day. Hence it becomes all the more important to give them a more tactile experience and that is what they remember because they see so much visual inside the screen there is hardly any recall value because you recall experiences and you are always bombarded with so much visuals and audio that it is very difficult for you to remember something small like a scene from a film or you might remember the visual but won’t be able to place it because you are consuming so much content and all of it is audio visual. So, when there is an immersive experience which requires more senses than just the visual and audio it tends to have a stronger recall value. Offish enjoys that, when there is not one way of doing things but multiple ways, so they do fun experiments and jobs.
There is an interesting concept in robotics that anything when made hyper realistic, then it is called an uncanny valley effect, where beyond a certain point the human mind, no matter how good the sculpture is or how good the finish is, the mind starts repelling that and many people find it creepy because it is very close to human but not human at the same time. The Offish team is trying to breach that, not by adding more realism but adding a character or emotion to it. When looked at the fanciest talking robot, they all look dead because they lack that little exaggeration- they are not absolutely real but the emphasis is slightly more on the emotion- on the expression. So, the team keeps on experimenting with different projects.
About the Speaker
Prasun Basu
Prasun Basu is a designer who has co-founded the Offish Character Art Studio Pvt Ltd. He has specialised in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design. Offish Character Art Studio Pvt Ltd is a unique facility in Mumbai providing conceptual design to physical manufacturing services to entertainment and creative industries. At Offish Character Art Studio traditional skills meet cutting edge technologies to transform imagination into tangible form. The studio handles Plaster to Poly Urethane and Clay to Silicon with same ease as it handles traditional sculpting to laser cutting and 3D Printing.
Like the approach to material and techniques the studio is versatile in different styles of work ranging from hyper-real to realistic, stylised, mechanised, miniatures to wearables and prosthetics.
