Tuhin Paul's Design Portfolio

PROJECTS

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Résumé

CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

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Animation Showreel

Communication Design

PORTFOLIO Dec ‘09

Tuhin Paul

Post Grad Diploma in Design New Media Design National Institute of Design B. Tech Information and Communication Technology +91-9709081237 [email protected]

PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Projects 1

Adi-Dharma

Animated folktales of the Munda tribes

Chase

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Forge

A MEL script for making modifications to a polygon object in Maya

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A digital audio-visual comic

Prithvi

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An Interactive animation on human existence and its effect on Earth.

Signage

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Signage designed for Gujarat state bus transport system to help the travellers in planning their journey.

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Creative Pursuits Sketches, Illustrations and Photography

PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Adi-Dharma Feb 2009 - Ongoing

Adi-Dharma is animated folktales of the Munda tribe that would be part of a documentary film on tribal religion in India. This is a project that I am currently working on for an NGO called AKHRA that is based at Ranchi. Target Audience: The target audience for this animation are the tribal themselves. But care has been taken so that other people can also enjoy the animation. Challenges: It has been a challenge to do an animation that can easily communicate to the tribal who are not accustomed to this medium. To get the tribal to connect with the animation, I had to take extra care to make it resemble their environment. The tribal characters in the animation were designed to resemble the real life tribal in their body structure, body language, facial features and their attire. Prior to starting this project I carried out an ethnographic research on the Munda tribe to know their lifestyle, their perception about themselves and their surroundings and relevance of their folktales in their lives. Also care has been taken to design the animation in a way that it blends easily with the documentary. Role: Story boarding and animation is being handled by me where as the dialogues and music is being provided by the NGO. Sample screen shots from the animation

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Adi-Dharma Feb 2009 - Ongoing

Characters

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Adi-Dharma Feb 2009 - Ongoing

Section of a Storyboard

Sample Frames from Animatic

Character Sketches

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Chase

Sept 2008

Chase is a digital comic that mixes audio with visuals in a sequential manner to create a new narrative experience. Though occurrence of comics on a digital medium like web or in form of e-book is nothing new. But in spite of all the flexibility offered by digital medium, these comics still assume the constraints faced by their paper book counterparts. This is where an audio visual comic like chase stands out. An audio-visual comic provides a more engaging narrative than text based comics. This is because while reading, attention is diverted to decoding the text message leading to disruption in narrative flow. On the other hand the same message provided through audio is more readily assimilated in the mind without disrupting the narrative flow of the story.

As the reader goes from one frame to another, the system keeps a track of the frame that the reader is currently reading and fades away all other frames. Whenever the reader goes to a new frame, the audio corresponding to that frame is played

Challenges: the main challenge was in blending audio with visuals. The reader uses arrow keys on the keyboard to traverse through frames in the comic. The Right arrow takes the reader to the next frame and the left arrow takes to the previous frame.

Target Users: Chase targets primarily comic readers in the age group of 20 to 25 years, who have access to computers and are used to reading digital comics. Role: This project was entirely handled by me with contribution from others in designing sound.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Chase

Sept 2008

After story boarding the story I went to Old Ahmedabad fish market and shot photographs at angles as drawn in the storyboard.

Story: For depicting a story in the audio-visual comic, Chase, I thought of a story of a dog that is in search of food at a local fish market. Scenario of a fish market was taken so that sound can have enough scope in building up the environment. Artwork: To give the story an authentic visual style of an Indian fish market, I decided to use the technique of illustration on photograph.

Result

Final artwork for the comic was created by manipulating the photographs in Photoshop and illustrating on them.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Chase

Sept 2008

Click here for more Samples

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Prithvi

Dec 2007

Prithvi is an interactive animation show to depict how face of Earth has changed with growth of human population on it. The idea was to design a medium that would attract attention of a passerby, engage him/her and get the message across. Challenges: Interactivity is engaging but to have it without users acquaintance to computers was a challenge. In this device the user adds human shaped plugs to the globe as a representation of increasing human population on Earth and the corresponding changes are seen visually. Such hardware arrangement helps the user in connecting his act of providing input and the feedback provided by the system. This input driven feedback mechanism to interact with the animation engages the user more than an interactive digital media that the user can interact with only through mouse and keyboard.

A user interacting with the device

Target Users: Target users for this installation are children without acquaintance to computers. Such an installation can be used for purpose of education in schools and institutes and also in exhibition design. Role: This was a team project in which I looked after the animation and software implementation part with contribution in concept development

Sample scenes from the movie showing three different phases of change on Earth through evolution of human civilization

The animation compiled into a short film of duration 3 minutes 17 seconds was screened at VIBGYOR international film festival 2009, Thrissur, Kerala.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Prithvi

Dec 2007

Mechanism Jurassic era

Globe without a human plug symbolizes Earth before human beings began to exist. Hence an animation of dinosaurs is played in a loop

Early Human Civilization

As soon as the user plugs the first human plug into the globe, the system plays an animation showing transition from Jurassic era to first human civilization. This transition video is played only once followed by video of next phase played in loop

Another plug plugged into the globe takes the earth to next stage in the same way as discussed above

Age of Empires

Third plug on being plugged takes Earth to the Modern era.

Modern Era

The video loop corresponding to the Earth in Modern era shows man’s technological advancements and its adverse effect on Earth’s environment.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Signage

Aug - Sept 2008

This project involved designing signage for Gujarat state bus transport system to help the travelers in planning their journey and reach their respective destination conveniently in a time effective manner. For the purpose of this project I based my study and field research on the Gandhinagar bus station.

3 ft

Old panel that not only gives inadequate information but also is designed as per the convenience of the management team rather than the convenience of the users

Challenges: the main challenge faced in this project was to do the information design to depict the vast amount of data that comprised of bus routes, bus schedule, platforms, tickets, fares and types of buses while staying within the constraints of available space to depict the information. Field research involved quantitative as well as qualitative research, contextual enquiry with the travellers and a system level analysis of the bus system at Gandhinagar bus station.

2.3 ft New panel that not only provides various options that a traveller could take to reach his or her destination but also is easy to read and use from management’s as well as traveler’s point of vew. The final panel ofcourse would b be in Gujarati language instead of english.

Target Users: For this project the target users were the travellers who only occasionally travelled from or to Gandhinagar bus station and thus were not acquainted with the bus system and the information design at the Gandhinagar bus station. Role: This was a team project in which I looked after designing signage system at platforms of Gandhinagar bus station. In the research phase I carried out the work of gathering data and conducting field research.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Signage

Aug - Sept 2008

Old panel that gives information of bus schedule and bus routes in the form of a list which was convinient for the management to depict but difficult for the travellers to use especially those who are using it for the first time.

The new panel depicts the information in a way that matches the mental model of the travellers. This panel gives higher priority to destination and routes rather than type of bus and their schedule. The final language for depicting information would be gujarati.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Signage

Aug - Sept 2008

Various bus routes color coded on the basis of platforms corresponding to these routes

Bus stations categorized on the basis of geographical location and listed alphabetically Schedule of various buses and list of stations they halt at.

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PROJECTS -------------------- Adi-Dharma ------- Chase ------- Prithvi ------- Signage ------- Forge CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Forge

Sept 2006-Jan 2007

This region gives access to object’s construction history

This human head was modeled in two days without using Forge This region lists modifications done on the object

The Ape head shown below was modeled from the human head shown above in less than two hours using Forge

Forge is a script written in Maya Embedded Language (MEL) to help 3D modelers in quickly modifying an existing 3D model into another different model in Maya. Maya is one of the most popular 3D modeling and animation software. In a typical 3D animation film production scenario, there are many characters to be modelled and mostly they will have similar physical structure. For example all human characters would have a head, two hands, two legs and so on. They only vary in features and proportions. Same goes for four legged creatures. In practice most of the 3D modelers have to model every object (especially the organic models) right from the scratch. Forge enables the modeler to tweak an existing model and remodel it into another desired form. Forge provides an environment where structure, shape, size and gender can be taken care of efficiently.

Target Users: Target users for this tool are the 3D modelers in Maya. Most of the 3D modelers don’t have sufficient knowledge about Maya’s internal This region lists workings to handle a task that Forge enables them to saved modifications do. Forge helps the user to access and make changes to the construction history of a 3D model so that the changes reflect on the final model in real time. Interface of Forge

Role: This project was entirely handled by me. The core idea of this project is adapted from a set of procedures mentioned on a web page that has ceased to exist now.

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PROJECTS CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Creative Pursuits Sketches Click here for More

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PROJECTS CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Creative Pursuits Illustrations Click here for More

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PROJECTS CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

Creative Pursuits Photography Click here for More

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PROJECTS CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

About Me

Experience Animation Director

Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 (1 year)

AKHRA (NGO), Ranchi, Jharkhand Animation of folktales of the aboriginals of Jharkhand for a documentary film on their religious belief system. Research Intern

June 2008 – July 2008 (2 months)

UTV Toons, Andheri, Mumbai Toon Shader to generate toon lines on a 3D model at any desired region and render 3D CG models as 2D cartoons Research Intern

July 2005 – Aug 2005 (2 months)

TATA Interactive Solutions, Andheri, Mumbai Data Representation and interface Design for Dyslexics

I am a Communication Designer, a post graduate in New Media Design from National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, Gujarat and a graduate in Information and Communication Technology from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. My work revolves around communication through different mediums like animation, interactive digital media, comics, posters and illustrations. Keeping in mind the content and the target audience, I blend different mediums to communicate effectively. I am always eager to try out new ideas and possibilities to give a unique touch to final outcome of my work and a new experience to the audience. My technical background helps me to innovate and find workaround so that I can successfully implement a new idea. Interests: I am passionate about animation as a medium of communication. Breathing life into a character is one of the most rewarding parts of being an animator. Animation is one of those few mediums that appeals to audience of all age groups. Beside animation I also love to do sketching, illustration and photography. Some of my favorite subjects are ethnicity, human and animal behavior, emotions, relations, mood, life. I try to capture an essence of these in my works.

Tuhin Paul DOB: 06 Nov 1984 C - 7, ACC Colony Sindri, Dhanbad828124 Jharkhand +91-9709081237 [email protected]

PROJECTS CREATIVE PURSUITS ABOUT ME

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