Ishan Shukla
It was an honor and absolute blast to be onboard as the jury member for Macau’s sound & image international film festival 2018. An eclectic mix of genres, styles and stories in this year’s animation lineup. A must attend! CreativeMacau CreativeIndustries
This is rare. Bollywood recognizing and awarding a mature animated short film! Thank you Power Brands Bollywood Film Journalists awards.
When I and my wife were producing Schirkoa from our home studio we didn’t know we would be sharing the tables with Bollywood celebrities, film critics and industry giants. Getting awarded with stars and creators of last year’s critical Bollywood hits like Secret Superstar, Bareilly ki Barfi, Hindi Medium, Jagga Jasoos and more was slightly overwhelming.
“The awards are the first no frills, absolutely transparent Bollywood Awards where selection has been based upon voting only by film critics and movie journalists. The exact votes of each journalist is displayed online before the event. http://powerbrands360.com/power–brands-awards.html”
With more than a year of festival run Schirkoa has been warmly received in numerous cities of the world. But it’s always a special one when when it returns home. On 17th December at Ravindra Manch, Jaipur, Schirkoa had a long awaited screening. The friends, family members and fellow artists were treated with a warm and cozy screening on the Sunday afternoon. Our sincere thanks to all those who attended, asked questions, and praised our hard work and love that is animation.
I have been steadily keeping up with the festival run of my film Schirkoa and the talks on the process. It’s been to 96 film festivals so far and still running well. The short film will be available on Vimeo on demand, Amazon on demand and iTunes next month.
I am now expanding the universe and writing a feature length version of the film. Good part : The pitch for the feature film has been selected as the finalist in the top Asian film market. Hope I get the funding and start the work on the feature length version!
Here is the coverage on Variety :
Singapore Media Festival: Project Market Proposes Eclectic SE Asian Line-Up
A proof of concept created with Raj Comics to bring Indian superhero Nagraj to life.
Some time back, I decided to create a short cringe-worthy trailer/proof-of-concept in the downtime amidst Schirkoa‘s festival run and upcoming music videos. Partly because I wanted something lighter and short to work on as my current projects are pretty heavy handed. And partly, because I wanted to create something out of the rich and exciting world of the Indian comics from the 80’s.
For those who don’t know, this is based on an Indian Comic (Raj Comics) Superhero Nagraj who can shoot snakes like Spiderman and possesses super strength, agility among many other powers.
Created in 5 weekends on an i7, Gtx 1070. Nothing fancy in terms of tech. Good old Maya 2014, Redshift, Daz and Mixamo goodness. Tried to go as mainstream and action packed in terms of direction.
Could have polished a lot more if I had time, but enough weekend fun, got to move on to some actual work!
Here are some high-resolution images for the fans out there:
Had a blast working on this one!
Band : Psy:code (psycode.info/)
Director: Ishan Shukla (ishananimation.com/)
Title: Stay Disappeared
Label: Pavement Entertainment (pavementmusic.com/)
Film: Schirkoa (schirkoa.com/)
CG Artist: Ishan Shukla
Had a fantastic post screening Q & A session and discussion at The Great Indian Film and Literature Festival on Schirkoa. It’s motivating that audience received the film so well and asked intelligent and thought provoking questions regarding the world, characters and my own journey. It heartwarming that many of my family members could come and finally watch Schirkoa, now that it visited my hometown.
Had a screening of my short animated film Schirkoa and an intimate discussion on Schirkoa at Dylogg Coworking (Bhopal) last week. A beautiful place and lovely people. This is the first time I was addressing an office space in an intimate setting. Listening to their thoughts and curious questions was an interesting experience.
It’s been a year since Schirkoa‘s completion. And it’s been wonderful. The story of bagheads, the protagonist 197a’s own demons and Schirkoa – the city’s beautiful claustrophobia was a story worth telling. The film has done considerably well in it’s run at the festivals. It qualified for the Oscars by winning LA Shorts, won top honor at SIGGRAPH and staying pretty strong by getting screened in some of the most prestigious film festivals. These are all horribly scary things for an anti-social person sitting behind a computer whole day consuming cup noodles, video games and internet junk.
Early tests from 2013 and 2014 :
Animatic (2015) :
Trailer (2016) :
Before it’s eventual online release it will have a run at decent number of TV Channels and VOD Platforms across the globe, thanks to New Europe Film Sales Distribution.
Ishan Animation Studio will now create more such films. Hopefully at a quicker pace. At the moment, it’s taking a break from narratives. It is going to deliver a couple a Music Videos before delving deep into the next film.
Welcome, to Ishan Animation.
It’s a pleasure to announce that Schirkoa will be distributed all across the world through New Europe Film Sales, Poland. This means over the coming months you might be able to watch Schirkoa on various TV channels and platforms apart from film festivals.
To start things off, those in Spain can catch Schirkoa ‘tonight’ on various Canal + Channels.
http://www.movistarplus.es/guiamovil/CPXTRA
http://www.mundoplus.tv/programacion/parrilla.php?canal=CPXTRA&fecha=170707
