Cruel Angel's Thesis
Bachelor's Thesis at IIT Guwahati
Logline
Medha, a 19-year-old girl who is tired of inconveniences in her life has a chance to change it all when she meets her magical deity.
Motivation
Though the story is a fantastical journey of the Heavens helping Medha, The implication is that, Medha is actually going though a self reflection, understanding her morals and changing herself & her everyday life. and the Heavens is just her mental portrayal of what a Goddess would be, and the most prettiest girl she can think of.
With the War at Iran, Gaza & Ukraine, and the Ai boom that replaces art and Human intervention with slop, I went through similar feelings and reflection, and I wish to make my audience emphatize or atleast make them think of their responsibility in all this.
Expected to Release on
July 2026
Guided By
Prof. Sheetal M Gokhale
My Role
Writer, Director, Concept Sketches, Storyboarding, Modelling, Texturing, Skinning, Animation, Lighting, Rendering & Shading, Post Production.
The Team
Shafrin Sidiq - Writing, Concept Art, Voice Acting, 3D Expressions Cards
The Process
Pre - Production
The Story & The Script
This script follows Medha, a 19-year-old dealing with frustration and uncertainty in her life. After facing rejection and feeling overwhelmed, she visits a temple to vent, where she unexpectedly encounters a divine presence.
What follows is a series of events where her wishes are granted, forcing her to face the consequences of her own demands. Through this, the story explores responsibility, perspective, and the role of individual action.
Mood Boarding & Referencing
This moodboard supports the project by organizing visual references used to define different aspects of the characters and world. It breaks down elements such as characteristics, body language, visual representation, clothing, accessories, language, and ethnicity into different separate sections for Dividing the concept.
Character Sketches
The Character concept art developed for the project - Initial sketches were created to explore form, proportions, and overall visual direction. Based on these, illustrators were guided with specific inputs to produce refined reference sketches for use in later stages. Final Illustrations were made by Shafrin Siddiq, Directed by me, Mathan.
Environment Sketches
The Thanjavur Room, Magical world and the Temple are the locations for our film. The Magical world was created with metaphors in mind, and also to show the Majestic Nature of the heavens <3
Thumbnail Sketching & Story boarding.
The sequences are laid out to clearly map the progression of events and character actions. Camera movements have been intentionally kept minimal and straightforward, as several backgrounds are intended to be matte painted. Limiting camera motion helps maintain visual consistency and avoids complications in integrating these elements. The Final Act of the Storyboard has a change in progress.
Production [ Work in Progress ]
Voice Acting ( By Shafrin Siddiq @shaficreates )
This section covers the voice acting for the project. Both characters were performed by a single voice actor, Shafrin Siddiq from IDC, IIT Bombay. To differentiate between the two characters, formant tuning is used in post-processing. This technique alters the tonal quality and perceived vocal characteristics such as depth and pitch without significantly changing the pitch, allowing the same voice to represent distinct identities.
Modelling
This section covers the 3D modelling for the project. All assets were created in Blender and developed entirely from scratch. This includes characters, environments, and accessories, with a focus on maintaining consistency with the established visual references.
Texture Painting & Lighting
This section covers the texture painting for the project. All assets were hand-painted using UCUPaint. Permanent shadows were intentionally painted into the textures to maintain a consistent look, supported by an additional procedural shadow layer to enhance depth where required.
Rigging & Skinning
Facial Expression System
The Facial Expression System are done with 'Face Cards' were flat 2D illustrated images are used as face masks on to the character, and each facial feature are animated Individually by an array of the face card changes.
Animation & The rest of it
While the current phase establishes the pre-production and proof of concept, several key components remain to be completed. These include the development of detailed environment matte paintings, full character and camera animation, sound design and effects (SFX), and final post-processing. Each of these stages will build directly on the existing assets and visual direction established so far.
Animation, Sound Mixing and VFX are in Progress, and is Estimated to be Finished by
July of 2026
