Established in 2008 and having a huge game creation background of over 20 games to its credit, Ani2Pix Studios, the gaming studio founded by R N Bhattacharyya and Banani Bhattacharya builds and designs Games for IOS, Android and PC platforms as well as delivers Animation and Comic Design services.
At present, the studio is working on their first in house game titled ‘Sukhu Dukhu’. A core team of five members is working on this game since past four months. This game revolves around the characters, Sukhu, Dukhu, A Cow, Horse, Banana Tree, Chander Buri, who is an Old lady and the concept orbits around finding the game players goodness and love for nature.
Targeted at the age groups of seven and above, ‘Sukhu Dukhu’ is a single player, adventurous mobile game and the concept development of the game is spearheaded by R N Bhattacharyya whereas Banani is overseeing the overall game play.
With 5 game levels, ‘Sukhu Dukhu’ starts with a simple, 15 year old poor village girl player who is running after the wind to catch the cottons that the wind takes away from her. While running after the wind to reach the cottons, the little girl faces numerous hurdles including a cow asking for help and the game player now has a choice whether to help the cow or to ignore and run behind the wind to take back the cottons.
If the user helps the cow, wins a prize and then goes on to the next level of the game and the journey continues. As the game progresses, the character starts to become beautiful or ugly, depending upon the times she has helped the animals or whether she chooses to skip helping the animals.
The team has taken around 15 days to complete the script of ‘Sukhu Dukhu’ with around 6 days taken to achieve the storyboarding of the game. ‘Sukhu Dukhu’ does spread out the look and feel of West Bengal and to know more about this, we hear thoughts from Banani Bhattacharya, CEO of Ani2Pix, who shares with AnimationXpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala by saying,
“Yes! It’s the first that time we are showing the art and culture of West Bengal in mid 60s.The game is all about making your own avatar , helping others, not to possess greed, etc. and will remind the players about the “Roopkatha“ of Bengal.
The game sets a village ambience with folk music background score and pointing out on the software technicalities, the game is created with classical animation technique, GIMP, Blender and Unity Is used as the game engine. For bringing about the game animation, the classical light box working method is used by the team.
Speaking more on the animation medium used for ‘Sukhu Dukhu’, Banani, asserts, “We’ve used 3D technology for the game engine and made the choice of using classical animation because the character is wearing a sari with ethnic Bengali ornaments and we wanted to execute a smooth, old cultural and subtle feel.”
According to Banani, giving the old and cultural Bengal look and feel to the game was a challenge and the team visited many villages to understand the kind of dresses the villagers wore during 60’s. The entire game is given a green look and feel to depict the freshness of nature.
Banani highlights more, “we spoke to different people from Bankura and Sundarbans to decide on the look and feel of the game play. Also, it was tricky to create ponds, old ornaments and dressing a 15 year old young Bengali girl was a challenge.”
