One of the favourite superheroes, Spider-Man has a huge fan following in Goa too. As the Marvel Universe is expanding, its latest offering of Spider-Man is ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’. As the film ends and the credits roll, keep an eye on the lighting section. Goa’s very own Swapnil Halarnkar is a senior lighter and compositor for the animated film. He is ecstatic that the studio has put up such a fabulous film that will surely make it to the Oscars, just like the first film, ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ won the Oscar in 2019.
As Swapnil’s parents were government employees, he lived in Altinho, Panjim in his early childhood and then moved to Porvorim. His early schooling was at Acdil High School, Porvorim, he completed his Class 12 in Science at Saraswat Vidyalaya College, Mapusa and then studied for Applied Arts at Goa College of Art, Altinho, Panjim. However, it was his Class 1 teacher that spotted his talent for drawing. “I could draw anything and my teacher informed my parents that I should later join an art college. I salute her vision,” says Swapnil, as he is back to Goa from Vancouver, Canada where he works for Sony Studios.
Swapnil defines himself as multi-talented artist, with his profound love for singing, drawing, painting, cinematography and sculpting. “As any art form requires constant observation, we observe all the beautiful things that light does when it falls, bounces and gives different effects. Composition skills are a day to day requirement of my work at Sony. I create and paint my own concept and lighting keys which is an added advantage for me being a fine artist. I learnt animation software when I was in my second year of college. I am a self-taught lighting animation artist. I purchased 3Ds Max and Maya books from my part time job, which I was doing to support my education in art. It was very difficult to land a job in animation without going to animation school. But I kept on creating 3D artworks,” says Swapnil, who considers Sharon Calahan, a renowned lighting artist as his role model.
He was selected at DQ Entertainment, Hyderabad, where he worked on his first project ‘Mickey Mouse Club House’. He worked at Prana Studio on ‘Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast’ and ‘Planes’. His also worked on films like ‘Sin City’, ‘Rumble’, ‘Back to the Outback’, ‘What if’ and Netflix’s ‘Barbie’. He worked as a lead lighting artist on Marvel’s ‘What If’ with a huge team in Pune, India but the leadership team including Swapnil were working from Toronto, Canada.
How exactly does Swapnil work on lighting for animated films? “As a lighting artist, we are responsible for presenting the final rendered frame. Lighting artists add colour and lighting information in the scene. We do story telling by placing lights and designing the frame so that the audience can feel the story with colour and light. There can be different styles which are decided by the director and cinematographer. ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ had six styles like six movies in one. It was a very difficult movie ever made in lighting,” he explains.
He worked as a senior lighter and compositor on ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’’. Interestingly, this animated film also had for the very first time an Indian Spider-Man, Pavitr Prabhakar, voiced by Karan Soni. Swapnil worked on a few of India world with Indian Spider-Man, establishing shots and a few other shots on Miles Morales, Spider-Man’s world. “We had few Indian artists in my team and my supervisor Benjamin Hendricks called us Indian consultants on Hindi. As India world had Devnagri script and we checked for any discrepancy. My better half, Srabani Chakraborty, too works at Sony Pictures as a lighting artist with me. She is a great artist and a pleasure to work with her,” says Swapnil, who will be working with Sony on their next movie project. “It looks great and very different from the ‘Spider-Man’ movie,” he adds.
Swapnil joined the group of Goa College of Art students and faculty for a screening of ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ in Goa and felt at home talking to the students about his work on the film. He says, “I felt so happy that my college still feels that I am a part of Goa College of Art. Every time, I come to Goa, I visit my college. Every Principal, including Professor Willy Goes and other professors knew what I was doing. I always wanted to come and talk to new students. It was a great experience answering and clearing their curiosity on how the movie was made and how my journey was till now. It was such an honour.”
To conclude, Swapnil advices young Goan artists to dream and work towards it. “I think Goan artists are very innovative, unique and very talented. Goa has an environment to nurture each one’s artistic abilities. However, there is no replacement for hard work,” says Swapnil.