Mangalore-based animation and VFX studio, Plangle Studio, have recently worked on an animated video song Ninnanthor Yaaru Ilvallo featuring the Kannada superstar Dr. Rajkumar in an animated avatar. The song is a preview for the upcoming Kannada movie Daredevil Musthafa, directed by Shashank Sogal and it is also considered to be a tribute to the late actor Dr. Rajkumar.
The animated video of Dr. Rajkumar is one of the first projects of Plangle Studio to hit the screen. The song tells us the tales of the great Mysuru ruler Kanteerava Narasaraja I and celebrates the braveness and strength of the ruler. The animated version of Dr. Rajkumar steals the show with his muscular wrestler looks and brilliant visual designs.
Sharing the experience of working on the very first project, Plangle Studio founder and CEO Prajwal Vas told AnimationXpress, “This project has been a very difficult and interesting process, both in terms of understanding the workflow and executing the final output. For the first time, we used different techniques and used Blender to create 2D using a grease pencil. We also explored Animatics from the first instance, as the director (Shashank) wanted to create cinematic camera movements. To understand the entire process and the R&D took some time.”
It took four long months to complete the whole song and the video managed to collect four lakh views on YouTube. The work was also appreciated by the Blender Foundation chairperson Ton Roosendaal, who shared the video on Twitter and wrote: ““The emperor and the wrestler”. Worth the watch! The song starts after 50 seconds. Made by Plangle Studio using Blender GPencil. #b3d”
The project focused on making the local talents from Mangalore reach global standards by delivering high-quality world-class VFX and animation content. “This is our first project. We are a small studio that started in 2017 but were underground for a long time. We trained our team for two years and we were out of production in the initial days. Now we are ready to take bigger projects and to deliver high-quality content. Ninnanthor Yaaru Ilvallo is our first foray in IP creation and the Plangle studio’s goal is to create an animated feature film,” Vas said.
Vas spoke about the major challenges that were faced while creating the animated song. He shared, “We have all the artists, abilities, talents, tools, software, but the major challenging factor was the vision. In abroad you have to think out of the box, the software, tools all come next but the vision always stands first. Character designs, landscapes, and lighting are the major challenges for us. Shashank had mentioned that Rajkumar should look exactly like Rajkumar and it is very hard for us as the representation of a character is attributed to the person who was alive. It is quite difficult to make the content look as rich as original Indian content and to get the richness in colour and lighting was challenging for us.”
Expressing his joy as Ninnanthor Yaaru Ilvallo received overwhelming responses from the audience as they are delighted to see their idol in a new avatar, Vas shared, “To release the video song we went to Mysore. During the release, we had hardcore Rajkumar fans who whistled and shouted crazily during his first entry. The reception from the audience was spectacular and it was like love from a different world. The viewers on YouTube were very happy to see Dr. Rajkumar again in animated form and also compared our animation to anime, which was a great honour for us.”
Revealing their upcoming projects, Vas shared, “We are working on a couple of local contents in Mangalore and we are also doing VFX for a Kannada film. We are at the initial stages of research and planning to launch our local original animated IP.”
