ACK Media launched Sons of Ram in the digital format at Comic Con Mumbai 2011. The project is being developed in collaboration with Turner Broadcasting. The movie Sons of Ram is inspired by the original ACK comic of the same name by the Late Uncle Pai. The film adaptation written and directed by Kushal Ruia, combines familiar elements of the comic with fresh ideas that help tell the story of Luv & Kush like never before. Essentially, this new adaptation aims to do what any good adaptation or re-telling should, that is stay true to the heart and spirit of the original while at the same time making it relevant to a contemporary audience.
The production of “Sons of Ram” is an international effort. Most of the pre-production, like design, story, voices, and art direction was done in-house at ACK Animation, Mumbai. While majority of the production and post-production work was done by a studio in Malaysia, it was constantly under the supervision of the Director Kushal Ruia and his core team at ACK Animation, Mumbai.
“The casting and recording of these characters was an adventure by itself as we had to cast a huge cast of 15 major characters in this movie ranging from wise old sages to young naughty children. We were lucky to get some fantastic actors from theatre and film to do voices for us and bring these amazing characters to life. We have young TV / Theatre actors like Aditya Kapadia (Just Mohabbat) playing Luv and an industry veteran like Sunidhi Chauhan playing Sita and of course, she sings too!” said Kushal Ruia, Director. “The film uses 2D hand drawn animation. The traditional look has an appeal that no other technique offers. Also the story with its larger than life events and mythical creatures lends itself well to the strengths of 2D animation like graphic shapes and stylized animation” he further added.
Viewers of Sons of Ram will not only find all of their favorite characters like Luv ,Kush, Sita, Ram and Valmiki amongst others but also new characters that were created specifically for the film by Kushal and his story team. These new characters will bring depth and entertainment and help add a fresh spin on a familiar tale.
Sons of Ram is ACK Animation’s first musical. Being a big fan of musical story-telling in its purest tradition, the writer/director, Kushal Ruia persevered to find collaborators who understood how to move the plot forward with songs and be storytellers with him. This led to composers Gaurav Issar and Shailu Rao who created beautiful melodies that echo the emotions of the character and the needs of the plot at the given point in time. Ace lyricist Asif Ali Beg, also worked with Kushal to weave the threads of the story into the lyrics of the songs organically. So be it Sunidhi Chauhan ‘s (Sita) soulful lament “Free To Be” or the fun road-trip song with the kids “Going to Ayodhya”, all songs in “Sons of Ram” move the story forward, if you miss them, you will definitely miss an essential part of the storytelling.
When asked why launch with a early presentation as opposed to a full fledged trailer Kushal says, “The initial idea was to launch a conventional trailer but I felt since we were doing this at the comic- con, we could do things a little differently and make it special. Since comic- con is all about diversity of art and artist by their fans, it would be a perfect place to celebrate and showcase the diversity of the art that goes into the making of an animated film.
There is tons of art like concept art, character explorations, color keys, story boards, rough layouts etc which are made by a range of artists to define the look of the film. And though every piece of work is crucial in telling us where to go with the film and where not to and is a piece of “art” by itself, it is rarely seen by the world. Though this reel shows only a fraction of the pre-production art created for Sons of Ram, I wanted to fit in as much as we could to celebrate importance of pre-production art and its artists. An the comic-con was the perfect forum for the same.”
