CTNx 2013 and AFD

Hi all! Sorry again for the long silence. I recently got back from Los Angeles where I attended the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank. It's been my third year attending and once again it was an amazing experience. I met so many wonderful and inspiring industry professionals, who were so kind to give their time to review my portfolio and their feedback was also really helpful!

My favourite workshop was probably Claire Keane's. I am a huge fan of her work, and was also able to speak to her for a little while after the workshop, which was amazing. I also really enjoyed meeting Tom and Tony Bancroft again. My sister and I met them last year at CTN also. Tony Bancroft wasn't really looking at reels or portfolios, but he was kind enough to look at and give me feedback on mine. He gave me some really great advice so I am very appreciative of that! I also got a lot of great advice and reviews from animators from Blue Sky, Nickelodeon and Walt Disney, and Dan Hansen who is the Head of Character Animation at CalArts. I was also chosen for an animation portfolio review with Bobby Beck from Pixar! All in all it was a fantastic experience and if anyone is thinking about going in 2014, I would highly recommend it!

Anyway, now that I'm back in Melbourne, I'm going to be doing some more work for Australia for Dolphins. Australia For Dolphins (AFD) is an amazing non-profit organisation aiming to stop the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji. Earlier this year I designed their mascot character, Doolin, and created a short animated film promoting awareness for the cause. The website is almost up and running, so I'll be posting a link to the website and the short film soon! In the meantime, they're running a competition for their Facebook page. They're looking for ideas for a cover design, and I will be illustrating the winning idea. Here's a link if anyone is interested in entering! I'd love to hear all your ideas!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=550537195029524&set=a.546203665462877.1073741828.457989087617669&type=1

Anyway, I thought I'd post some of the illustrations I've already done for AFD. These will be used in the website as some small 'panels' for the links. The first will be for Doolin's Story (the animated short), and the second is for Doolin's Introduction (a small 15 second video I animated of Doolin introducing himself and AFD).

Updates after a long absence!

Hey guys!

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post (almost 3 months)! So sorry it's been so long! Things have been reaallly busy with our second year films! But we just had our online edit last Friday, so now I'm more free. During production period though, I would basically just wake up, animate, eat lunch, animate, eat dinner, animate, sleep. And eat copious amounts of chocolate in between.

In other news... I just found out a couple of weeks ago that Whale Song won the award for 'Best Animation' at the AOF Festival! It was also named runner up for 'Best Children's Film', and I was runner up for 'Best Young Filmmaker'. So that was very exciting news! And I also recently found out that Whale Song was accepted into the Chicago International Children's Film Festival!

Anyway, seeing as all the animation is finally done for my film, Little Big Hero, I thought I'd post up some stills. The film isn't totally complete yet though - we're now in sound production. I'm working with an amazing composer and sound designer - Sonya Belousova and Eric Schwartz - so I can't wait to hear what they come up with for the music and sound design! But for now, here's some stills from the film:

Little Big Hero Pencil Test

Today I thought I'd post one of my recent pencil tests from the current film I'm working on, Little Big Hero. I won't go into the details of the story right now (it's 2am and I really should sleep...), but basically in this shot Scout (the little girl) is forcing Fettuccini (the donkey) to wear a tutu. Hope you enjoy it! :) And I always love feedback so if you noticed anything in the animation that doesn't look right or needs improvement, please let me know!

Little Big Hero

This week I thought I'd post something from my second year masters film, Little Big Hero. It's the story of a little girl who befriends a donkey in the forest. Here's some early concept art I did for it. I have some animation tests too, but I haven't uploaded them anywhere yet so I'll post them soon. We're currently in the middle of production on it - it'll be finished mid-November. :)

Life Drawings

Sorry it's been so long since my last post! We're well into production on our second year Masters films, so it's been pretty busy here at the moment! I haven't rendered out any pencil tests from the film yet, but when I do I'll upload them. But for now, here are some more life drawings. :) These are about a year or so old... The first two are long poses (about 45 mins I think), and the last two are quick gestural studies.

Character Designs and Award Nominations

I got some very exciting news the other day! I just found out that Whale Song has been nominated for three awards at the Action On Film Int'l Film Festival! Best Animation, Best Children's Film, and I've been nominated as Best Young Filmmaker. I'm very excited and honoured! A big congratulations and thank you to everyone who worked on the film with me! :) 

Anyway, here's some of the character designs for the Captain in the film, and also some whale studies I did prior to starting any animation. It was really interesting to study the whale movement and doing some conte whale drawings was also very fun. Sorry about all the Whale Song stuff I've been posting! I'll get to some of my more recent work soon, but just wanted to get my backlog of things posted first. I think this is about the last of it though, so enjoy these sketches and next time I'll post something different - promise! 

Whale Song Pencil Test

Seeing as how this is an animation blog, I thought it would be good if I actually posted some of my animation work haha. So this is one of the shots I animated in Whale Song. The baby whale is alone and looking for his mother after the whalers attacked their pod. The first part of the video shows the line test, and then the second part is the finished shot. I animated the whale on paper and then used TVPaint to paint the background and animate the bubble effects. 

Whale Song Poster

After being accepted into the AOF festival, I realised that they provide so many promotion opportunities which seem really awesome. So even though I can't attend the festival, I want to take advantage of these. One of the things they provide is that they can print a poster of your film in the AOF Program. I decided to do this as the program seemed really great and I've also been meaning to make a poster for Whale Song for a while, but have just never gotten around to it. This ad deadline finally motivated me to get it done! I also made a short trailer that will go on the AOF website. I'll post that here when it's online, but for now, here's the poster. :) 

Life drawing and Action on Film

I just found out today that Whale Song has been accepted into the Action on Film International Film Festival in California! I'm really excited about this acceptance as it's a really great festival. There's amazing panels and workshops, lots of great films, and a red carpet awards night with major celebrities in attendance! Previous celebrities who have attended the festival have been Mark Ruffalo, Ron Perlman, Eric Bana, and others. It seems like such an amazing experience! Unfortunately I won't be able to attend as here in Australia it's the middle of the university semester and a really hectic time. I'm really disappointed but also incredibly grateful that my film was even just accepted! 

Anyway, that's enough of my "I want to fly to America to attend AOF" rant. Although if anyone reading this has attended AOF before, I'd love to hear you experiences and what I'm missing out on haha. But for now, here's some more artwork. For a change of pace I thought I'd post some of my life drawings. They're not my most recent ones - I did these about 2 years ago - but I thought I'd post some older stuff first and then get to my most recent things. Most of these were done using conte or conte/charcoal, but the second one was done using conte and ink. 

Whale Song Screenshots

Second post! Hooray! So, today I thought I'd share some screenshots from my student film from last year. The title is Whale Song, and it's about 5 minutes long. It's about a young whale whose mother is killed by a whaling ship captain. The whale grows up wanting revenge, but when the Captain's young daughter falls overboard, the whale chooses to save her instead. 

It's been screening at a few film festivals recently, which has been exciting. So far it's been screened at the Melbourne International Animation Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival in the Kidsfilmfest section, Chesapeake Film Festival and the California International Animation Festival. It was also playing on a TV station in California as part of a short animated film showcase. If anybody saw it at any of these places I'd love to hear your feedback and what you thought! 

It's not currently online as it's still screening at some festivals coming up that don't allow it to be on the internet. But as soon as those are finished I'll be uploading it, probably later this year. I'll post it here when I do. :) But for now, here's some screenshots! I didn't ever ink or paint the characters, as I love the look of animation in pencil test form. There just seems to be some sort of life and dynamism in the lines that's lost when they are inked. So I wanted to keep the animation in this raw form. Also, as we only had a few months to work on it at uni, I wanted to focus on the movement and acting rather than split my time with inking and painting. 

First post!

Hi all! I've been meaning to start a blog for my animation/pre-production work for a while, but only just got around to doing it today. But I'm very excited to start and hopefully will stay consistent in posting things! 

Okay, so, introductions first. My name is Nirali, I'm 22, and I love drawing and chocolate. I'm currently doing my Master of Animation at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. I graduated from my undergraduate course in animation in 2011, but felt like I just hadn't had enough of learning, so I decided to go on and do my masters. I also studied at Gobelins in Paris in the summer (well, winter in Australia) in their Summerschool Character Animation Program. That was an absolutely amazing experience.

Hmm... What else has been happening this year... My short animated student film that I made last year, Whale Song, has been screening at some festivals, so that's been exciting! I've also been working on two other films this year - one is my second year masters student film, and the other is a film for the organisation Australia for Dolphins. They saw my student film Whale Song, and wanted me to create a similar film for them about dolphins, with a story that would help raise awareness about the dolphin slaughter going on in Taiji.

Okay, enough rambling for now. Time for some artwork! Here's some of the early character designs for Annie, one of the main characters in Whale Song: