PROFILE OF THE WEEK
The Artist
A final year student at the National Institute of Design, Deepti Sharma has carved a niche of her own. Shuttling between midnight doodles, hand-drawn 2D films and music videos with whimsical collage animation, Deepti tells stories through her work that captures odd thoughts and moods. Deepti has been drawing for as long as she can remember, in bits and pieces on the back of question papers, on the margins of textbooks, and in her journals, but she began drawing seriously only after joining design school. ‘I began truly appreciating film as a medium only in my third year of college. I spent my first two years there extremely overwhelmed and also a little intimidated by everything, and I am slowly learning to be braver, and pushing myself to experiment.’
The Work
Over the course of a few films, Deepti has explored handdrawn 2D animation and stop motion. It’s the perfect setting of her love for telling stories with the love for drawing and working with material. ‘I find it so magical, how wire wrapped in foam and clay can emote something, or how a scribble I made in my sketchbook can move. Animation also gives you incredible control over filmmaking, everything you see on screen has been planned, and drawn or moved frame by frame by someone.’ Indie music has been an unstopped source of inspiration for her. Deepti’s work on an animated film for Aditi Saigal a.k.a Dot’s song, Everybody Dance to Techno, did really well for her and took her to various film festivals.
Over the course of a few films, Deepti has explored handdrawn 2D animation and stop motion. It’s the perfect setting of her love for telling stories with the love for drawing and working with material. ‘I find it so magical, how wire wrapped in foam and clay can emote something, or how a scribble I made in my sketchbook can move. Animation also gives you incredible control over filmmaking, everything you see on screen has been planned, and drawn or moved frame by frame by someone.’ Indie music has been an unstopped source of inspiration for her. Deepti’s work on an animated film for Aditi Saigal a.k.a Dot’s song, Everybody Dance to Techno, did really well for her and took her to various film festivals.
I’d been meaning to work with collage animation for a while, and thought it could work really well with this video, and Prateek Kuhad, whom I collaborated with on the video, let me play with the visual style of the video. We thought it would be interesting if Aditi danced with her own favourite characters in the video, and we spoke to her about what the song meant to her, and looked at dancing as escapism, and felt it would be fitting to create magical worlds she could escape into’. Currently, Deepti is working on an animated music video for the F16s for their new EP, Wknd Frnds. ‘I am currently in production stage. This is also the first animation project where I am drawing in a visual style very similar to the style I illustrate in, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone.’