An animated show can become creepy, creepier and the creepiest if an innocent childhood memory becomes akin to something terrifying and sinister! The creator of the YouTube channel ‘The Khooni Monday’ Divay Agarwal with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry always wanted to be one of the early initiators in creating an animated horror series. With the gradual acceptance of animated content by Indian adults, he strives to keep experimenting and creating animated content in different genres.
Founder of TMV (The Mad Virus) Studio, a creative agency that specialises in original content creation, animation and video production, Agarwal’s agency started out as a YouTube channel called ‘The Khooni Monday’ (launched in 2018) which has now garnered three million subscribers. Steadily progressing, they also started the Spotify podcast called The Horror Show by Khooni Monday.
Their latest Halloween release The Clown has already created a stir as an audible. The synopsis reads: After a 13-year-old girl, Anna, finds a doll looking like a clown in a park, she starts behaving very strangely with everybody around her, including her parents. In the same town as Anna’s, mysterious murders are happening one after the other. Strangely, all murder victims have clown makeup on their faces at the time of their death.
“Clowns have always intrigued me since childhood. Their painted face is like a mask behind which, one can be anything. Good, bad, or ugly! The Clown was part of our IP development process. We had developed the storyline keeping in mind all mediums. But yes, the scripting has been done keeping in mind both audio and animation format. We always wanted it to be India’s first animated horror series,” Agarwal told Animation Xpress.
The first episode was released on the YouTube channel on 17 October. They plan to release all five episodes on their channel by Halloween, i.e. 31 October. Meanwhile, all the episodes are already live on Spotify and the podcast is currently trending at number one.
Talking about the animation techniques that have been used while making the series, the content genius said, “We have mostly used 2D Animation which is a mix of motion graphics and cell animation. The characters have been kept as close to reality as possible and given the whole series dark color tone visually.”
He explained that the most challenging part of an animated series is to get the right character design and artwork. One has to stay true to the theme of the story and make it look both realistic and scary at the same time.
In a special mention about the sound and music playing one of the most crucial roles in the show, Agarwal remarked, “The sound and music are one of the most important elements in a horror show. We have adapted the notes of the popular children rhyme song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star into the creepiest adaptations you will ever listen to. Messing with childhood rhymes is so apt when you think about a scary clown.”
An experienced team of animators, illustrators and storyboard artists, background artists, story writers, background artists, voiceover artists, music artists and producers worked on the show.
The Khooni Monday is gradually becoming a treasure trove of amazing animated shorts targeted towards adults. There are stories on Indian mythology, certain rituals, haunted places and so on.
“We feel that India is a big consumer of horror content and till now we have got immense love from our audience which goes on to show that it is well accepted. We have seen a gradual acceptance of animation content in adults and it will grow at a rapid pace if we keep experimenting and creating animated content in different genres for adult audiences of India. Our primary audience is in the age range of 13-35 years with a healthy male: female split of 57 per cent male to 43 per cent female,” Agarwal concluded.
