Mumbai based HopMotion Animation is launching teaser of their Animated Web Show ‘Modern Activity’ exclusively on Animatio
nXpress.com. The very first teaser of the show was launched at the Mumbai Films and Comics Convention.
Written by Anish Patel, Carmen Zainabadi and Aarsh Vora, the web show is set to hit YouTube in the first week of February.
To get into the details of this show; we caught up with Anish Patel – Founder of HopMotion and started off a conversation with him by asking, does Modern Activity cater to mass audiences? And he says,
“Yes! Modern Activity targets teenagers and young adults, everyone who has an appetite for the naughty and rebellious.”
Hi Anish, please tell us about HopMotion and the kinds of work undertaken by your studio?
HopMotion is a 2D digital animation studio committed to creating entertaining content for various platforms along with creating animated explainer videos, corporate videos and branded content for various clients. The studio was started last year by me, Carmen Zainabadi, a team of writers/filmmakers with over 6 years of scripting experience for Film and Television. We have worked on projects including the animated Kid Krrish series that is being aired on CN and I’ve also assisted Director Shekhar Kapur.
What is Modern Activity all about?
Modern Activity is a 1st of its kind web show about the crazy capers of four of the brattiest and the most outlandish fifth standard students you’ll ever find with a simple aim in life, to turn their school “Modern Activity” upside down. Each episode is totally wild and uncensored and has guest appearances by many controversial personalities. At present we are in the production stages of this series.
Why this story line?
The idea was to create an animated web show in India aimed at teens and young adults and to have characters based on friends we’ve known in school. The young generation today is leaps and bounds ahead of us in everyway, considering that fifth graders in Modern Activity are imagined in a way kids today behave when no one is looking.
Please describe the characters and their traits and what was the research like?
All the research and references for the show have come from our school days growing up in Mumbai. In all likelihood we’ve all come across each of these in our own school, the black listers, back benchers, the ruffians that were every teacher’s nightmare. Savio Miranda, Burges Gyara, Naim Kajalwalla and Kartik Mehta represent those infamous few. The characters are typically Bombay brats. Savio Miranda is the street smart, motor mouth, prankster from Bandra, Burges Gyara is the bun maska loving a cat bawaji from Mazgaon. There isa clever business minded Gujju Kartik Mehta from Walkeshwar and the numb knuckle Naim Kajalwalla from Dockyard Road. And all of them make up the terror brigade of standard five in a south Mumbai high school called Modern Activity.
And what is the prime difference between the first one and this teaser?
The teaser takes off where the last one ended. Also there is a new character called “Ariyana Mukherjee” who will be introduced here. While Savio and Burges had their say last time Kartik and Naim, the show’s other two main characters will have their five seconds of fame at the end of this teaser. This teaser took us about a week to animate.
How many episodes in all and the targeted audience is?
In the first season, we are starting out with 12X3 episodes and we will be uploading a new webisode every week. The perception in India is that animation is mainly created for kids but not this one.
Can you shed light on the look and feel given?
The attempt was to create our own distinct style with a mixture of ‘tradigital’ and cut out animation. The look and style was deliberately kept simple with a fine balance of cartoony and realistic elements. This was so because we wanted the highlight of the show to be its humor and dialogue and this kind of style suited that goal the best. The show is created using the Toon Boom production pipeline.
What is the broadcasting plan?
We intend on taking this straight to the audiences via YouTube. We don’t have a marketing budget for the series so our plan really is to make the funniest show that people love and share on social media. The real challenging is to get an audience, especially if you don’t have a lot of money to send on marketing efforts.
Why only a web show and not airing on any channel?
We chose to go ahead with the web instead of pitching it to television as we wanted to have complete freedom and the ability of tweaking the stories based on viewer responses and also perhaps incorporating real life school stories and incidents that our viewers send in.
And what’s next after ‘Modern Activity’?
We will be coming out with a new web show every quarter. Next quarter we will be launching our next animated show titled ‘The SoBo Snob.’ It follows the funny ramblings of a snooty South Bombay dude who looks down upon everything beyond the worli see link. And also we are working towards developing an animated series for Indian television.