What is the film about?

A 1 minute 2D animation exploring my fluctuating relationship with my Indian and Sri Lankan culture over the years and how it has affected me personally and socially as someone who was raised in the UK, based on a diary entry of mine.

What influenced it?

My main influence was the South Asian artists I follow online, I realised how much seeing them speak about these struggles the more I felt that since I have the capability to I should too, even if it was only reaching a few people. In terms of the style of the art, I was very much influenced by Studio Ghibli, I love the slow shots their movies include showing the beauty in small everyday things which is what I aimed to do regarding my culture. Additionally watching one of my favourite movies The Prince Of Egypt I love the way the camera moves and 2D drawings move around 3D environments and so I wanted to try to try this.

A little background information...

This film was submitted as my final project of my second year at University however this was something that I had been working on for a while before, I have felt a lot of conflict regarding my culture throughout my life- a battle between my love for it and my hesitation to fully embrace it at risk of mockery or judgement.

However in recent years I have met people who have taught me to embrace those parts of myself and my culture and yet I still find myself struggling to let go of some of these ideas instilled into me. This film uses text from a diary entry of mine reflecting on this struggle contrasted with the beautiful visuals of my culture in animation to create a film that resonates with so many people of colour.

I posted this animation on Tiktok and Instagram and the responses I received from so many POCs were heart warming and it was so wonderful to see others feeling the same way as me and to know that something I made helped them deal with this conflict.

How was the film made?

This animation stemmed from the text I knew I wanted to include as subtitles and set the tone of the animation, this was my diary entry which equalled about 1 minute of text, I found a discordant carnatic 1 minute musical piece and knew it was perfect for this tone.

I then roughly storyboarded and used Clip Studio to create my animatic and the rough movements and pacing, I then transferred these rough animatics into blender as I wanted camera movement through 3D environments for this animation. I coloured and imported sari textures to overlay and played with the framing and lighting, and after much toil the animation was complete.