Studio Dreamcatcher has created 2D Animated Signature Film for a movie production company titled ‘Small Town Cinema’. The short was released with a Malayalam mo
vie named “Ezhu Sundara Rathrikal”, which is produced by Small Town.
AnimationXpress.com had a conversation with Roshan K, Director of this short to know about the approach
that he went with to create the film.
Please tell me more about the studio and the services that Dreamcatcher offers?
Previously we were known as Dragonmill Studio, and we started out in Bangalore in 2010. Before that we were just a three member (Kishore, Sinu and I) creative brotherhood known as Libera Artisti. The name change is part of an expansion plan. A six member creative board (of which the three of us are a part) currently head the studio. We have forty-three artists working at Dreamcatcher and execute everything related to 2D Animation, starting from concept generation and pre-production to compositing and final editing for animated films
What is this short all about and how did this project happen? 
This 30 seconds animated short was designed as part of their branding for production company Small Town Cinema. This project came to me on my freelancing break with Nirvana Films and kept on hold before I joined Studio Dreamcatcher. It was felt like huge project for me to take up but with the wonderful support from the team, it came out better than how I visualized the movie.
Small Town Cinema Signature Film from Studio Dreamcatcher on Vimeo.
What was the brief given to you by the Small Town Cinema and the top three points that you followed for making this short?
One doesn’t always come across a client who would give you complete freedom on all aspects of the film and wait patiently to see what you have come up with. Being a talented director from advertising field, the client perfectly understood the concept of creative freedom. All I had to give them was a short animation filled with ‘innocence’. We decided to go with a traditional style of animation using digital drawing tools and hardware. We felt we had to push our boundaries a bit and figure out a style that does look a little organic and less digital.
Who is the targeted audience and is the character or the story inspired by any real life reference?
This being the signature film for a production house, we decided to make it appealing to all audiences. Since we can’t really predict what movies this precedes, out safest bet was to keep the theme direct and simple.
I believe everything we do, design and Imagine has a connection with something/somebody/some experience from our lives. Then again, the character was designed and re-designed many times by our very patient pre-production team until we found the little girl whose story we need to tell.
Can we have a credit run down?
Client: Small Town Cinema
Director: Roshan.k
Line Producer: Ansal Rahiman A A
Animation Director: Abhilash Narayanan
Storyboarding: Anoop Sreeli
Animation Supervisor: Sumesh K
Key Backgrounds: Shajeer S
Layouts: Nikhil C, Sandeep R
Backgrounds: Suneesh S, Sreeshan R S
Animators :Saji V, Sujith P T, Robin R, Biju T K, Binoy V, Subramaniyan P, Sandeep R, Anoop Sreedharan
Compositing and VFX : Praveen Stanley Johnson, Subin T L
Compositors: Priya Sajith, Kiran B
Edit: Ansal Rahiman A A
Sound Design: Nixon George & Rajeesh K R
Please describe the look and feel?
We wanted to share what we experience and feel when it rains in our little locality with the rest of the world. Apart from the styling of the movie, everything you see is very much Indian.Elements like wind, rain, thunder or lightning were used as the audience does relate to it.
How was the pre-production like?
Pre- production was divided into three, where artists worked parallelly on character design, look and feel concept art and story boarding. Once we got approval from client, we combined all the elements and recreated one scene from the film to see how everything gels together. This added a couple of days to the production schedule but the entire team knew how the film is going to look once we are done. Setting a style benchmark and reference in pre-production phase always helps the artists who are going to take things up after that.
Why 2D and how much time you took to complete the short?
It took us around a month. I am a huge fan of 2D animation. Some might say it is a dying medium. But the fluidity and beauty we see in a classic 2D animated clip can never be the same in another style. Then again, I believe no two mediums should be compared and one can’t replace the other. In this film, we found 2D, that too traditional Hand drawn style, more apt than anything we could think of. The process was painstakingly long and complicated. At some point, we even had some artist sitting and working on each rendered frame on the movie on Photoshop to bring in some effect we needed for the final look.
Can you shed light on the Production?
Production took at least two weeks. Even though we used flash for animation, this project required a more traditional workflow. We had our animation director and senior animators with strong 2D background draw the key frames for the entire clip. Different teams worked on in-betweens, Tracing, Shadows and rough edges. Background and Compositing team worked hand in hand to create the final look and feel of the film, carefully treating each and every frame by hand, unlike regular batch rendering methods. We made use Wacom Cintiq for bringing out key animation drawings. Animation was done in flash. The final look and feel was a combination of hand painted textures, moving textures from specific videos we shot, Photoshop brushes, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.
What references did you go through for creating this clip?
Our space for this film was innocence. What better place to stay innocent than inside a studio Gibli film. We watched many before we even touched the subject. We realized it is not the cure characters but the believable experience and details we add to them and around them does the trick. As a personal inspiration, I kept a friend’s little daughter in mind for future references and it help wherever got stuck or I couldn’t relate to the subject.
Would you like to unveil about the future plans that your studio has?
Our primary focus right now is to generate our own IP (Intellectual Property). We have a Core IP Team for this, and currently they are creating age-and-genre-specific TV programs. Apart from this we also have a few client projects going on.