008
Behrupiya
Created by
Vibhav Singh
Assisted by
Preetham Gunalan
Creator's Note:
Anyone that grew up in the NCR region in the early 2000s would be well aware of the Monkey Man terror that pervaded the streets. A rumour that grew into an urban legend, and got the adult me wondering, "What if Monkey Man was just a misunderstood vigilante?"
While the initial idea for this piece didn't start from Monkey Man, it grew into something that reminded me of that episode from my childhood. This gave me the idea for the radio broadcast in the beginning of the piece, and the overall atmosphere for the setting.
For a while now I've been wanting to explore a blend of Gothic-Noir, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to do just that. Given that I was partnering up with Preetham, it felt only natural to centre the piece around a creature that could morph and shapeshift, and let Preetham flex his skills and its muscles.
From the very beginning, my main aim through this experiment was to build a soundscape and atmosphere, but music was never a part of it. Until I stumbled upon Twin Musicom's "Way Out West" while trying to look for a whistling sound. That's the point this turned into a Gothic Noir-Western, and I stopped thinking of genres altogether.
The mysterious, shapeshifting ‘Behrupiya’ was the perfect character for Preetham to try some really textured silhouette animation with. From the very beginning, the idea was to keep the character as a silhouette, so as to add to the character's mystery while simultaneously reducing the animation workload. Vibhav envisioned the character to be smoky and fluid when human, but have a glitchy and broken feel while transforming, which Preetham achieved by modulating his cleanup accordingly. The smoke exhale animation allowed for some interesting play with opacity and brush size to achieve the sensation of smoke particles ‘dispersing’.
This was the main shot that brought the whole piece together! The approach here was to take some liberties with how light and shadow might actually work, and deliver on the sinister sensation of the shot itself. A bunch of different textured brushes helped with creating a feeling that the character is undergoing a transformation from stable, to very unstable, and then finally back to stable.