This is no Hum Paanch, but armed with a team of just five artists and two creative directors, Delhi based Addition Animation is surely packing in quite a punch!
Established way back in early 1990, it is only as recent as 2004 that Addition has become a full fledged animation outfit. The art house is founded by Dipak Das, the creator of the popular character Cheeku which has been featuring in the children`s monthly Champak for the past 35 years.
Within a year of kickstarting its animation work, the studio`s first animated TV series Liono ke Sapne (five episodes)was completed by a team of five artists and aired on DD Bharti in 2005.
Speaking to Animation Xpress.com, Addition founder Dipak Das who besides Cheeku has also illustrated comic strips such as Shantu for Lokmat and Chhutku for Hindustan Times shared “Liono Ke Sapney may be about Liono`s dreams but it was actually a dream come true for me. I always wanted to create something new for my Cheeku fans and this concept allowed me to create new stories with animals characters in Liono`s (who in reality is my dog) dreams. We had a very modest budget as this was a commissioned series by DD-Bharti. However we wanted to provide a very high level of quality and hence insisted on having good hand made background drawings”
Following its first set of episodes, the studio has recently completed its second set of five episodes of the series, with yet another set of five episodes (third set) currently in the post production stage. “With the final five episodes in post production, we will have a complete series of 15 episodes. We will then begin engaging with kids broadcasters for the show” quipped Das.
Featuring quite an interesting plot, bearing some semblence to one of the hugely popular live action DD shows of yesteryears `Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapney` the series is about a pup named Liono and the various adventure filled dreams that he has. Addition has used a semi classical animation style and look for the series.
“We have used a lot of highly detailed backgrounds for Liono Ke Sapney. It proved to be a problem as they were slowing down the animation rendering. Moreover, we used lot of effects like zooming and panning that generally require a lot of rendering time and storage space. We still did go ahead with these effects inspite of the challenge as they provided a distinct cinematic splendour to the story” shared Anshuman Das, Co-founder of the studio.
Addition is also in the midst of developing another original animation project entitled Kuber Ka Khazana (2D).
The series revolves around Raavan and his brother Kuber. The story begins with the two brothers having a fight the consequence of which is that Kuber buries his treasure and the key to it which is unearthed by archaeologists` years later and then the story takes off from there.
“Kuber Ka Khazaana is a very ambitious project and we are really excited about it. The work on this project is on in full gusto. For Liono Ke Sapne, we came up with a new process of our own that allowed us to get a high quality output with few artists and low overall cost. The same experience will now be applied for this project” concluded Anshuman.