I made a small animation clip today!  Now how did this come to be?  Through the Drawn blog, I came across this post on the Toronto Animated Image Society Blog, which talks about a project called "Anijam", where submissions are invited of 10-second animation clips based on the theme of "Machines".

So, I had an idea for a short film with the following storyline: two people are talking to each other and one of them says that the Cybertech Corporation has plans to enslave humans by turning them into cyborgs that they can control, through nanotechnology.  The other one says that he knows all about it, as he is one of Cybertech's bots himself!  He then takes of his glasses to reveal cybernetic implants all over his face, from where wires shoot out and rip through the flesh of the other person, and then turn him also into a cyborg.  (Sort of like Borg assimilation.)  Then, the following text flashes on the screen: "Bot 9 to Cybertech Core: Subject 618 Repossessed."  Then the reply arrives: "Very good, Bot 9.  Proceed as instructed, repossess population."  The End.

Of course, animating all this would take a lot of time, but I did finish one scene from this, the part where Bot 9 takes off his glasses to reveal the implants.  It turned out pretty well, so I uploaded this video for you all to see.  So here is a very rough demo of Subject 618, which is written, animated, and directed by me!

As with my previous video, you have the following options to watch Subject 618:

• Download the video (WMV file, 720 x 480 resolution, 505 KB)
• Watch the video on YouTube
• I also added this to the videos section in my orkut profile.

The character's face here was drawn, and I drew additional versions of the eyes and mouth.  These were pasted and manipulated in Photoshop to create the individual frames, which I then animated using Windows Movie Maker.  I made this one in widescreen, utilising a 2.4:1 aspect ratio (Windows Movie Maker automatically letterboxed it, adding the black bars on top and bottom).  As of now this is a very rough demo of Subject 618, but I'm pretty happy with it for one evening's work.  It's the usual SF-cyberpunk stuff that I love to do, and the drawing style resembles my comic, Smoke.  Of course, there's no music or other stuff yet.  Still, do let me know what you think of the video!

EDIT: 01:02: Was not at Chennai for a couple of days in the last week as I had gone to support a Campus Recruitment Drive at a place called Kovilpatti.  Returned to Chennai on Friday morning.

EDIT: 24 Apr, 23:21: Added the video on YouTube and my orkut profile, updated the post above appropriately.