Ashna Choudhury
3D Artist | Modeler | Programmer
Night Market recently won the World Impact Award at the Grizzly Film and Arts Festival.
Night Market
Last year I was a part of a wonderful class titled CNM 190: Advanced Digital Animation. CNM is a year-long course taught by Professor Dan Garcia at Berkeley (who is the nicest, most enthusiastic, and supportive animation mentor I could ever hope to have), where two groups of twelve students create a 30 second animated short. I was lucky enough to be a part of the Night Market team that year. This film was special to me, and everyone else on that team, because of the personal and relevant story at its core. Each of us were incredibly moved and honored to be able to tell a story about the Asian Immigrant and Asian-American experience; a story about two women connecting across generations through their shared culture and heritage. CNM was a special and unique experience and it will stand out as one of my fondest memories of college. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank each and every member of my team for bringing this wonderful story to life, and for creating friendships and memories that I will cherish for a lifetime.
For this film, I was responsible for aspects of pre-production, character and prop modeling, set layout, animation, and rendering. I was also one of the project managers for Night Market and I want to thank my Co-Project Manager, Abby Cohn, for being my partner in crime throughout the year.
Character Design & Concept
Near the beginning of the year, I worked on various parts of pre-production including early character concepts and designs. Below are early sketches and character sheets for Jackie and Grandma Ping.
Early concept sketch for Jackie
Early concept sketch for young and old Grandma Ping
As the weeks passed, we had a better idea of what Grandma Ping would like and decided on a few important characteristics such as the cloud-like curls in her hair and the mole on her lower lip.
The challenge then became, "how do we de-age Grandma Ping throughout the short and still keep her recognizable to the audience?" As part of that question I drew several concepts of Grandma Ping throughout the years.
Character Modeling
When we got into the modeling portion of the class, I contributed a lot to the team in terms of character modeling. The most important, and most complex, character that I had to model was Grandma Ping in her middle-aged version. The reason this process was so difficult was due to the fact that we had to create several iterations of Grandma Ping at different ages so that the character could seamlessly de-age in the spin sequence of the film. This meant that we had to create a base model of Grandma Ping, and make the other version from that model. The model that we used was mine, and as a result, I had to spend several weeks ensuring not only that she looked stylistically good, but also that her model did not have any topology issues. Even though the process was difficult, it was incredibly rewarding and it was the first time I had ever used programs like ZBrush to make characters.
Grandma Ping (30s)
Responsible for all aspects (design, modeling, shading)
In addition to Grandma Ping, I modeled several background characters that would inhabit the scenes in the Night Market. We created several fun characters to become a part of our fun world.
Leng Zai (Owner of Leng Zai Buns)
Responsible for modeling
Hazel (Owner of Tea Pose)
Responsible for modeling
Set Layout
I also created the layout for the Hong Kong (1940s) set in the spin scene. This was meant to be the part of Grandma Ping's life where she left Asia and immigrated to America.
Animation
During the second half of CNM, our team spent most of its time on animation. The most complex scene to animate, by far, was the spin sequence in which Jackie travels back in time through various moments in Grandma Ping's life. This scene required months of animation cleanup, camera work, composition fixes, and a LOT of patience. There is no doubt that this scene caused the most stress amongst our team, however, with all of our hard work combined, we were able to create a magical and surreal moment in our short.
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For the spin sequence, I was responsible for all aspects of character animation as well as the transitions in the backgrounds.
I also helped with cleanup and/or background animation in the scenes below.
