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Everyone who's ever struck out on their own and moved to a big city knows that house hunting can be an ordeal that sends fear into even the most stoic of hearts. With having to deal with everything from wheeler dealer brokers, to exorbitant rent to terrifyingly low standards of basic hygeine; the long and sometimes tedious search for a new home is rarely ever something that anyone looks forward to. Add the packed-in urban metropolis of Mumbai to the mix and you get exactly the scenario that Abhinav Krishna has depicted in his animated digital short — 'The Worst House I Ever Saw'.
Tell us a little about this project.
The story behind the animation short is a true story. I had moved to Mumbai in 2016. It wasn't my first time moving cities, it was my first time living independently. Figuring out everything independently. The apartment building and the apartment itself came as a shock to me. It was expensive, damp, cramped etc. The experience stuck with me. Lately, I had been feeling the need to really put something out there in terms of work. Something that I felt was really me. I went back to the story about house hunting, the first and the first of many stories I started telling about my Mumbai experience to friends. I finally put together the house-hunting story as a script and added visuals to it with an attempt at making the video exactly how I would tell it to someone in real life.
Describe your creative process and the purpose with which you create.
I think. And I think a lot. I think while I am eating. I think while I am watching something. I think while I am working on another project. I think while I am talking to other people. It's not a good habit but I try not to think about that. Thinking takes up a major portion of my time as I like to imagine all the different ways I can tackle a scene. I mentally keep narrating the scene back to myself, looking for different things: humor, a reference to something, an effective way to end existential dread, or a linguistic joke I can throw in somewhere. Once I have a start, a middle, and an end, I sit down to storyboard it out. I write out the dialogue simultaneously with the visuals as I try to find a comedic element in the visual to go with the dialogue or vice versa. Post the thinking phase, comes the tinkering phase. Even with everything ready in my head, I will make more changes as I sketch out and animate the frames, right till the point the video has gone online. When I create something like this, I want to say "Look we have had a similar experience." Everyone has a worst house or a bad date story.
What are some of your biggest inspirations over the years of your artistic career?
I grew up on an unhealthy dose of anime, Star Wars, and the Simpsons. My teen brain couldn't yet process structure, format, or storytelling. Still, I found a great appreciation for the early seasons of the Simpsons. On graduating high school, I realized that I had a better recollection of the seasons of Ruorini Kenshin/Samurai X than I did of integration, derivations, and chemical formulas. Getting into animation was an easy decision to make. Eventually, I found my way into the works of Ralph Bakshi, Satoshi Kon, Kentaro Miura, the Arakis, etc. Much more recently, Love, Death Robots, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken and The Spiderverse films really helped me reinforce just how much love I have for the medium. A major influence for me has been a YT channel called Whitest Kids You Know.
What are some things you learned while putting this project together?
Gonna sound contradictory to what I said above. But. Don't overthink it. I am still going to overthink the process. What I mean is, don't overthink the after. I had been putting out content on my Instagram sporadically for a while. Just nothing seemed to hit a mark. Then I posted this, posting something on Instagram for the first time in months. There was no trending audio, no 100s of topical hashtags. It still worked. People engaged with it.
Who are some artists who are currently on your radar?
Tony Babel, RhymzeLikeDimez, Tresspassers, SpaceDawg, Osheen Siva, Chaitanya Dixit
Tell us about a project you wish you were a part of.
The new Spider Man: Across the Spiderverse. There was a call to artists and animators all over the world, inviting them to be a part of it. And it became one of those things where I kept thinking ok I will send in my work, I will send in my work. And I never got round to it. The film just came out and I have been following the behind-the-scenes and the insane amount of love and detail all these artists put into making the film is giving me major FOMO.
You can follow Abhinav here.
