KAGHATI
OUR JOURNEY TO
CHAPTER 0
Unconventional Encounter
This 'first' part actually has not much to do with the process of our Kaghati film, but I feel the urge to share how everything started from the very beginning.
It all started with this rolling giant snowball.
It was a simple animation test I did on Blender’s Rigid Body and Dynamic Paint feature. I posted the video in my Stanimate! studios Instagram page back in December 2019. Of all my other posts, this was the one I didn’t expect to gain so many impressions from others. I thought it was just another plain-and-simple animation experiment on physics simulation without any character nor storyline. But boy was I wrong.
It somehow became my most viewed, liked, and saved post to this date (as I'm writing this)! Honestly, I still don't understand how nor why, but that's beside the point. As my notification page was being bombarded with all the likes from various accounts (which I'm very grateful for), one account stood out from the rest; @smidt3dart. Instead of liking just the snowball post as the others did, he went into my page and liked around 10 other posts. Since this account showed more interest and appreciation towards my works, I decided to reciprocate his kind gesture. I went over to his page with the intention of merely liking a bunch of his posts ...
... but instead, I found myself genuinely liking a bunch of his posts for they were really impressive! He's a really talented 3D modeler and sculptor, and I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be great to see those amazing-but-static sculptures come to life?"
Long story short, we introduced ourselves and conversed through Instagram. We then embarked on a small collaboration where I was to create a looping animation of his fish model flopping on a frying pan. Here's a still frame from our simple project:
We were still working on this looping fish animation when Andreas asked the question that started it all. On February 8th, 2020, he proposed the idea of us creating a short animated film together, a project which eventually grew and became this Kaghati short film. Who knew, a gesture as simple as liking each other Instagram posts can lead to this big collaborative project, much like the rolling snowball that starts small and gets bigger and bigger!
Some of Andreas' 3D models in his Instagram posts