Prasanth Chundakkattil hails from Nilambur, a small hill station in Kerala. He pursued a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering after which he worked with a Mumbai based firm. After one and a half years of struggle in Mumbai, he decided that the regular life wasn’t for him and returned home. With the help of his father and cousin, also an animator, he travelled to Bangalore to learn Maya and Photoshop. This was a turning point in his life. Immediately after that, he joined Paaprikaas animation studios as a junior lighter.
Keen on improving himself and seeking new challenges, he moved from Bangalore to Hyderabad to work at DQ entertainment. After a while there. he moved back to Bangalore to join Xentrix studios where he had the opportunity to work on a feature film called Gladiators Di Roma. Finally in November 2012, he joined Mopl as a senior digital lighter.
Taking his first steps into the world by just observing the work of others, Marek denko for 3D and Pascal Campion and Dylan Cole for 2D are his primary influencers. “Return to Prime Even” by Marek is one of the best projects that he’s seen.
Inspired by their sense of styling, their artistic qualities got ingrained in him. He learnt camera setting and its movements, how to make an image with proper depth and what are the industry standards from my favourite artists. Watching others’ work still plays a big part in his work and he always seeks out ways to incorporate what he’s learnt from others in his work.
His work involves him doing the modelling,texturing,shading lighting and compositing for images. Preferring to use traditional Maya lighting styles, he avoids using final gather or Global illumination techniques in his work if possible. Commenting about the state of Indian art, he says:
I don’t see many 3D works which are well done by Indian Artists. I feel that they don’t post their work online. Either they are afraid that they will lose their image or that somebody else will cash in on them. I always keep searching for indian artists work but never see anything substantial in quality. Why? I would like to see all of us posting our works on sites like bananabandy so that we can contact each other and get guidance on whatever we think we are lacking in.
Prasanth feels that we can almost always make out if a 3D work has been done by an Indian Artists because there is a big difference in quality between what we do and what international standards are.
He believes that the reason for this is the system of education and the learning process which we follow for art in India. We are taught a lot of stuff quickly and sent off to work but people don’t realise that we miss out on learning the nuances and details of the softwares and artforms which we are working with.
The lack of creative inspiration from our culture is also a facet where he feels that Indian artists are lagging behind.
We have innumerable things to follow in terms of our own culture but we are not exactly following them. We are not deriving enough from our culture. Our Mahabharatha is as epic as they come. Why don’t we use it for referencing. Can we picturize all of its stories? Nobody seems to be bothered about creating something out of our own stories. Why should we use the work of other cultures as a reference when our own culture is so vast and great is something that I don’t get at all.
Prasanth believes that a formal education in arts is essential, it helps you to learn software and develop your aesthetic sense properly. It also helps you be more confident as you learn through your errors and when you finally step out of college, you can step right into the workspace with confidence.
He hopes to one day work with the industry giants such as Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, Bluesky, etc.
I want to see my dream come true, it is not easy and I need to learn a lot more both technically and aesthetically. But I will keep striving to improve myself and reach there one day.
He likes to keep opening his old projects and reworking on them. Adding more detail to them, changing the camera and the textures, thereby giving them a fresh look and continuously improving them.
The best advice that he’s been given is about creating variations to lighting in CG projects.
Having variations in lighting that will create magic in the output. At first i didn’t understand its real meaning but now it has become somthing that I always keep in mind while creating. There should always be variations in processes like painting, lighting,texturing etc.
When I started off I was a slow learner, today I am still learning but faster than ever before.
Quick Questions:
Name a book that everybody must read?
Mahabharatha
Name your favourite movie from all time?
Ratatouille but how can i not mention Avatar and Rango?
Your Favourite Hexadecimal Colour Code?
Favourite Font?
Georgia
Which is the coolest project that you’ve seen on BananaBandy?
BattleLa revisited by Rahul Bhatli and Bhivraj Sul’s rickshawala are cool.
If you were not an artist then what would you be?
A footballer for sure.I love that sport.I still want to become a footballer but 35 years of age makes me tired too soon.