It has been nearly 8 months since we started working on our latest short, Jhakki Ramdeen, a story set in an Indian prison. After all these months, and thousands of still photographs later, we are happy that we are now halfway through the film. A month in animation time is very little time indeed, so reaching halfway point was cause for celebration; and celebrate we did, with some strong Islay scotch.
Our approach this time is a little different from The Sweetmeat Boy. The animation style is still stop-motion and everything is still completely handmade – but this time we have replaced upright sets with multiplane, layered backgrounds, and walking armature puppets with armature-less wet terracotta figures laid onto glass sheets over the backgrounds.
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While the multiplane downshooter approach has made things somewhat easier when it comes to creating sets, moving and animating figures on each plane has become far more complicated thanks to the terracotta clay, which is brittle when dry, and goopy when wet.
We are ready to begin shooting the second part of the film, where we will employ more traditional paper cut techniques. Pleased to be saying goodbye to the troublesome terracotta, we are looking forward to the less exasperating paper. Although the material (paper) is less of a challenge in this second part, hand-drawing sets and figures is a daunting prospect, considering neither of us has any training or experience in drawing. We estimate that it would take about 4 more months to complete primary filming, with music and post-production to follow. In the meantime, we will keep updating the blog to document the process.