Sketchbook Sundays With Nikunj Patel

Kulture Shop's Sketchbook Sunday is back! We organized an animation workshop with Nikunj Patel.

Sketchbook Sundays are visual diaries which capture the thoughts, ideas and inspiration that drive creative minds. During every event, we showcase artist works, explore the creative process and offer a short Q&A, followed by a group sketching session or workshop. For our 12th Sketchbook Sundays, we explored animation with Nikunj Patel at Levi's Lounge.

Nikunj Patel is a graphic artist, animator, illustrator, VJ, beatmaker, and founder of Studio Moebius. Primarily working as an independent animator, Nikunj wanted to make the medium more accessible with this workshop. Since this was an intensive workshop, the participants were a set of twenty curated applicants - ranging from illustrators and designers to filmmakers and musicians wanting to experiment with animation.

 Glimpses from the venue - Levi's Lounge.

Nikunj spoke about his own earlier works and experience in animation. He used a selection of videos to inspire the audience and inform them about the wide breadth of history attached to the medium. Nikunj also explained the twelve basic principles of animation.

Nikunj Patel during his talk.

 Nikunj Patel's work on his Instagram.

This was one of our most intensive workshops yet - lasting more than four hours. Fortunately, despite the heavy downpour and a football match, we managed to get a passionate crowd for the workshop. The workshop began right after the talk. The audience was split into groups of three, where each person was assigned a role of illustrator, key animator, and clean-up artist. Four teams worked using lightboxes, while the rest experimented with stop-motion.

 Patel demonstrating the process for the workshop participants.

Nikunj explained to the participants how to break down an animation into a set of frames as well as how to track them on a 'dope' sheet (a planning sheet used by animators). Using a lightbox to trace over the design, he demonstrated the process while explaining

The participants had to conceptualize, illustrate and shoot over 40 frames over the course of the next two hours.

Work in progress.

Participants working with stop-motion were provided with an assortment of objects to work with - buttons, cables, keys apart from the basic stationery. The participants came up with novel ideas and poured life into the workshop with their ideas.

One of the teams used only buttons to create their animation.

The teams then proceeded to digitise their frames. There were two stations set-up where each team could shoot their frames.

The final product was a video compilation of all the animations made in the workshop. The music track was provided by Oceantied.

Thank you to Levi's Lounge for providing us with the lovely space, to all the participants who came down all the way to Lower Parel despite the rain and to Nikunj, for hosting this edition of Sketchbook Sundays.

View the full album here. 
Shop Nikunj Patel's art here.