Watch out for more. :-)

Journey So Far - Part 2

 Part one here.

So, if you have seen the work on our company's website, I'll tell you that its not all. Its just about 60% of what we did so far.  Why all is not showcased on the website? Well to be honest, as I have stated before that to survive and keep the studio running we had to do some generic and client oriented work not of our style and appropriate of showcasing on the website. So there you go, only the best of our work.
We started the studio without really planning about it actually. Originally we gathered to work on our dream project. After our education was complete, (formal one which didn't really matter, but it taught us how to learn BY ourselves) I wrote a story. A short story of a boy and a girl. It is about the deepest emotion of longing too hard for a small boy to understand. How he sees it and goes through it is a very different world than ours. The story was very closed to my heart and it did brought tears to my colleagues and friends who heard it. We shared the dream to make a short film on it, and so started the actual journey. We had a rented room in Pune City and without knowing much about how to go about it, we started. But we were really amateurs and didn't work out. And so we all parted and went on with our lives. A few of us got a job and we all spread out across the state.

After a few years, again the passion, the dream and the craziness possessed me and I left my great going job and came back home to team up with him. I informed my old team that I am giving it one more try and if anyone wish they can join in. It turned out that most of my team mates were just as crazy as I was, and we all came back together once again, leaving the jobs and homes behind to pursue 'The Kite'.

 It is the reason we gathered without holding back and everyone struggled at their own expenses to see it through. Our families and friends supported us and we started functioning like a studio. We rented a place in Kolhapur City and worked there. It was a beautiful palace wing. The structure was about 400 years old and was the perfect way to work in peace and pursue creativity. Slowly we had to take in some commercial projects to pay our bills and it grew from there. We made AD films, we shot documentaries and we provided VFX services to sustain. Without us really being aware of it, we were a studio. So one day, We decided, It is gonna be a different set of challenges and a much bigger dream from now on. We became, the Headquarter Studios. As the City was a small place and not really an Animation and Film market, we moved to Pune again and set up our studio much more formally and professionally. I will tell you that the way I say it makes it look like a big success and growth, and yes it is, but not quite (Don't find it weird that I am directly telling you the facts and the truth. It is what it is). We struggle more now to make out our expenses and pay up the salaries. We struggle to reach our monthly income targets. We struggle to hone our skills as artists as very little time is left to us. and most of all we struggle to work on what we came together for.

Sadly 'The Kite' is being delayed as we have to work on other projects simultaneously. But we still work on it as much as we can. You can see the work done so far here. (Can''t show you the Animatic and Storyboards as it will really reveal the entire story ;-). Don't wanna mess up the surprise. We started posting the WIPs online and got great feed backs from friends and very talented industry experts. Surprisingly, we were approached for an interview about our short film by Animation Xpress, India's leading online Animation Magazine. You can read the article here.
 
Running a business without knowing a single thing about it is madness. And keeping alive the passion of the art along with it is a challenge. More on it later.

To be continued......

One more crazy step

Yeah I know. The same old thing. ‘I am sorry. I didn’t write for a long time’ and blah blah bla! I think I should kick myself for that but I’ll spare me this once ;-) Hopefully I am feeding my blog just in time, before it dies of starvation.

A lot of things happened.  I don’t know where to start. I left my job as a Character Animator at Fatballoon Animations, Chennai. I am back home. And there were few reasons to leave a good job like that. The major one is, well, even my friends from that studio may not know this ;-), ‘making my own short film’. Yeah you guessed right. I am THAT guy with THOSE dreams. Crazy I know. A risky or a stupid step I know. You better call me and my team here MAD, because that’s what we are.

I can’t reveal too much about the short like who and where and how we are working on it. But I promise you guys, at mid august, we will be launching the website of our short film with some of the Pre production work and the team members. All I can tell you is that we are having so much fun working together on our dream. I don’t care then if it doesn’t fill our tummies for now honestly. This is the time we can do it. This is the time we are doing it.

An old initial rough concept.

Keep up with the calendar as we will be launching the website and the work we are doing. I hope that you’ll enjoy the journey through the entire production of this film with us. Adios!