Jan 4, 2017

Indian film director Ishan Shukla shares his path to making a short "Silcore."

Indian film director Ishan Shukla struggled away for 4 years on his first animated short film, Silcore. When he finished it last summer, he started submitting films to film festivals. And it won several, including Shorts Fest in Los Angeles, which means films qualified for the Academy Awards Animated Short category. This is an incredible achievement for any filmmaker, not to mention one from India, where independent animation has not yet advanced.

Silcore also recently won the Best-In Show at SIGGRAPH Asia2016 in Macau. Cartoon Brew sat down with the director at a conference last month to discuss the short story, how it was made, and about Shukla's thoughts on the struggling Indian animation industry.

But first, look at the trailer for Schirkoa below:

Cartoon Brew: Your idea for this film is somewhere else. Did you come from-

Ishan Shukla: It was basically about a society that made me break the way people live in a seamless world without discrimination or racial differences because of the act of bagging. Under the bag Law, people had to wear a bag on their head.

Partly I used that idea to avoid the need to do face animations. But then I thought about it, and thought that if I had a bag as a face, it might actually look better - it would be more stylized and create a surreal experience.

And from there it turned into this dystopian world. I was very inspired by the novel 1984 and Terry Gilliam's Brazil. I also play a lot of games including dishonor that don't actually have a specified period, so I also liked the idea that if you had this stylized look for a movie or game, it could be timeless.

Despite being cg animation, this film seems to have a very realistic feel from the final look and floating camera, for example, and you can talk about these aspects-

Ishan Shukla: Well, it was animated in 3D, but I don't want to intentionally include reflections It's a reflection and mirror hit, a dead present for a 3D film. The film is also very dark in the end, so I wanted to maintain a certain mood for the film. Also, I thought it was a feature film, so I tried to make it as cinematic as possible with the movement of the camera. It was my first film and I still don't know what my style is.

How did you create the image-

Ishan Shukla: What I did was render everything in 3D and take the outline only from the character. Then I superimposed them over the background. It creates a very unique look, and then I can play a lot with colors. So the movie red light district, it's just red and blue. Every scene in the movie also has heavy volumetrics to give it a hazy mist-like look, I think added to the dystopian feel

In terms of animation, it was mainly motion capture for people. I used an online service called Mixamo that provides animation. Most of the secondary characters are motion-captured. All the key characters were customized or my video reference – a video in which I filmed myself acting in front of the camera. Even with female characters. Then there were a couple of animators, other artists and voice actors, and musicians also helped with the film.

I used Maya for animation and post-production in After Effects and Photoshop. For rendering, a beta version of Redshift had just come out in 2013 and I tried it and it was great. I was actually able to render the complete sequence in a few days' time. So I took a leap of faith with it.

This was your first film, but what is your own background in the animation -

Ishan Shukla: I was previously trained at 3dsense Media School in Singapore. After that, I started working in 2D commercials and documentaries for a broadcasting company in Singapore. My position there was cg generalist. Whenever I got a project there, I had to do it from scratch – I took two years of sabbatical because I thought it was a good time to become an art director and try making my own film after storyboards and animatics and 2D animation

. I came back to India. It was very dangerous, but that's when I started working on this film.

What is the state of Indian animation right now-

Ishan Shukla: It's not very pretty right now. Large studios are mainly doing outsourcing work for other studios. As far as individual IPS are concerned, there are basically only 1 or 2 ips for preschool children. When I was studying, I really expected it to grow. I kept reading articles where the Indian animation industry was booming, but now I'm there, so I don't think that's the case. It's really just that outsourcing work, some vfx, and some work for Bollywood movies.

Did you receive the funds to make Silcore-

Ishan Shukla: I was trying to get some, but I really know where to look, and I'm really very new to this. I did not know many people, so it was very difficult to find funds. I worked mostly from my savings and my wife was very cooperative. There was no external funding.

When Did You Start making movies and when did you finish-

Ishan Shukla: I started working on the story in 2012. The actual production began in 2013, and I completed the film in 2016-7. I also work as a day laborer, so I basically worked in the evenings and weekends.

What was the experience like submitting to the film festival and making Oscar credentials -

Ishan Shukla: It's been about four months since I started submitting it. It was great to win several festivals and qualify for a long list [of academies]. It is mainly making rounds in Europe. I've gotten a lot of emails with people interested in distributing movies. I'm still exploring the part.

What is your hope for Indian animation, and your own work-

Ishan Shukla: I think there's a way out there for me. There is no industry in India yet and I think I can do something about it. I have heard from many people outside of India about my work, but if you have a producer who is interested in India, I think it will be a great start. The original IP coming from here is a good thing. I already have a treatment for my feature-length version of Schirkoa.

To see the full list of movie details and credits, visit the Schirkoa website.