Indore based Pitara Studios, Founded by Divyansh Ganjoo, has completed their very first 9 minutes, 58 seconds animated short ‘Wish’ and was nominated at this year’s Asifa India’s Awards of Excellence.
In a conversation with Divyansh, AnimationXpress.com gets to know more about the interesting aspects of this short.
Please put light on the concept and story line of ‘Wish’?
‘Wish’ is a tale of a cute little girl awestruck with a postbox. She dreams the postbox as flying, delivering mails, capable enough of knocking even the god’s door. Her letters addressed to god, start getting delivered and her wishes get fulfilled. But, some revelations are at hand. Who was the ‘GOD’ fulfilling her wishes? What happens when the child comes to know of the truth? Wish is a 2D/3D musical animation short film exploring the subtle relations between a wish and its fulfillment.
Click here to view the teaser of Wish
Why this story line?
All our lives, we wish for something or other, directly or indirectly to god. Some wishes get fulfilled, while some don’t and at the end are forgotten. I, as a film maker tried to reflect upon one of the most complicated question in the most simplified way. Who really god is? The one whom we have never seen or the one who we can talk to, smile with and even cry in front of. Response to this enquiry is very thought provoking and subjective. I hope you will like our sincere and innocent attempt.
How long did it take to complete this short?
I started working on the project 2 years back but, due to the financial crunch I and my partner was not able to continue the project further. It’s really hard to find resources and finance for animation. I would like to thank Nikhil Badjatya, Vivek Kachhawaha and the entire team of Light House for supporting us and making this project a grand success.
Can you elaborate more on the story boarding done?
Story boarding was an important aspect as, it gave the foundation to the entire production line. We were relying more on the shot divisions and facial expressions as, we dint had a big team of animators with us. We tried to keep the entire treatment as unique as possible by designing physical sets to get the exact feel and style.
You must have studied varied behavioral patterns of kids for animating the little girl?
Definitely! Without this observation I wouldn’t have come up the concept of this short. We event executed a dummy shoot in order to create references for animation, that helped us a lot in the different stages of animation creation.
Did you try out many looks for the movie?
I wanted to keep the short as simple as possible with less textures and that is the reason we played completely with shaders. For giving a unique look, we experimented on the shapes of the objects and the characters giving an extra roundness to it. Coming from an art background it became little easy for me to visualize the look for the film. Thus, we didn’t struggle much to fix the look for the film.
Can you share the credit list?
Director- Divyansh Ganjoo
Associate Director – Keyur Dekate
Modeling & Texturing- Manoj Maran & Hrishabh Dev Singh
Story and Screenplay- Ashutosh Mishra , Divyansh Ganjoo
Music- Ramil Ganjoo
Editor- Keyur Dekate
Producer- Amit Vishwakarma
Co-Producer- Nikhil badjataya
Technical Director- Vivek Kachhawaha
Lighting- Himanshu Sharma
Rigging – Abhijit Saikia Shashi Prakash Mishra
Lead Animator -Keyur Dekate
2D Animation Team – Naman Dave, Mukul Lokre , Umang Verma
Did you consider live action as well when choosing the medium for the film?
Animation has always fascinated me. I met Keyur Dekate and discussed the project with him. He liked the concept and animated the film. The reason why I choose animation was because the script demanded it and I wanted to bring sweetness and innocence to this concept, which looked possible only through animation.
What is your vision now after recognition by Asifa India?
We have just started to send the film to various competitions and festivals and hope to hear good news soon! Apart from this, we are about to start a music video album for a Grammy Award nominated singer “Terry Duggins”, pre-production of which is almost over and we will go for the production soon. In live action we have just completed the shoot for our short film “The cartoonist” which will be a blend of animation and live action. We have already got a producer for our live action film and it will move into Production from February next year. Also, we are working on a script for a feature animation and hope it turns out good.
Any Closing comments
Yes! I feel story is the backbone of any film. In this age of animation in India we need more of storytellers to come up and use this medium to execute their ideas which have an emotional connect to the Indian audience.