Digital Illustration & Animation
Tales and fables always fascinated me as a child and took my imagination into another dimension where stories turned true and magic became palpable. These stories helped me develop a sense of awe, a belief in good and karma, and a zest for not constraining my imagination to the practical boundaries of the world.
I was introduced to digital art during my NIFT masters program, and and it has since become one of my favorite means to express myself. The illustrations usually have themes of peace, nature, abundance, or emotion as a subconscious focus. I realized that I enjoyed creating an aura of a particular feeling or state of mind as a means of self-expression.
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To add a fantastical element to my visual stories, I started adding little frame-by-frame animations to my illustrations, creating (or rather trying to create) a dreamy quality with an element of wistfulness.
Magic realism and storytelling fascinate me about animation. Although I have a lot to learn as an exploratory novice, experimenting with it has been very enjoyable and has also provided me with a new fluent medium of communication.
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This clip was designed after a trip to a remote mountain village in J&K, in 2020.
I wanted the video to exhibit feelings of serenity and calmness; present a moment away from city life, and engulf the viewer in warmth and nostalgia for a place they have never been to.
Experimenting
with colors, form, type, gradients, opacity, chrome, textures etc,
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Variations and Explorations
After visiting the tiny town of Latti at one end of district Udhampur in Jammu Kashmir, I was blown away by its simplicity and beauty.
One thing that seemed almost magical was one of these old Katcha houses with grass and flowers that grew on its top. I could not capture a photo but the image of it stayed on my mind for a while. I did feel a little sad as the foliage probably meant that the hut was abandoned.
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In this, I wanted to bring the tiny magical hut to life, and with it to portray a sense of lost nostalgia, coming to an old home with the light not turning on easily, but finding it to be full of warmth, family, food, and happiness.
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