The pandemic has changed several dynamics in day to day lives of people, including means of entertainment. Owing to the temporary restriction of live-action shooting and closures of cinema halls, many films have been taken up by OTT biggies to ensure undisrupted content consumption.
Disney owned Disney+ Hotstar recently launched Disney+ Hotstar Multiplex which will premiere many Bollywood films on the platform, including Kunal Khemu starrer Lootcase.
Animated short, Good Morning Mumbai fame, Rajesh Thakare of Blackbird Design Studios (founded in 2018) along with Troyvasanth and Niwesh Gurung recently created the short, funny and apt animated title design for the film.
Lootcase director Rajesh Krishnan was familiar with the studio’s work and when he wanted to have an animated title for the film, he got in touch with them. This project was undertaken and executed completely in-house by three of them.
“We had a couple of meetings and discussions with the director regarding the title sequence. As the premise was already there it was easy for us to translate it into a visual narrative. The visuals also evolved as we worked on the project. It is a mixture of 3D and 2D animation. After the storyboarding stage the blocking was done in 3D and the texturing and 2D animations were done digitally, then all the elements were composited together. We used open source software such as Blender and Krita for the production,” revealed Thakare to Animation Xpress on the ideation and execution of the title design.
It took about 20 days for Blackbird Design Studios to complete the project – 10 days for the initial ideation and storyboarding and the rest 10 days to execute the animation of the title sequence of Lootcase. Thakare did the 2D animation while Troyvasanth took care of the 3D portion.
Animated title sequence is not really a new trend as many films and projects earlier have taken this medium up to explore and experiment with ideas and imagination. The trend has witnessed a rise during the lockdown as animation unlike live-action doesn’t require in person shooting and also adds a different flavour and perspective to a story, and Lootcase‘s one is no exception. The dark indigo and grey hues against the red perfectly sets the tone of the film, which is presently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar VIP.
