Pre-production is the most important aspect of creating a successful animation or live action venture, but not many IP creators pay too much attention to this. In this session at ABAI Fest and KAVGC Summit 2015, Acropetal Animation CMD/executive producer N K Narasimhan spoke about the importance of pre-production in animation.
“Pre-production involves a lot of research and planning, and pre-production is very different for live-action and animation, simply because of the fact that one can go back and re-shoot a sequence in live action but when it comes to animation its very tedious and costly,” he explained.
He also stated that character development is something that needs a lot of attention for a successful IP. “Look at characters like Superman or Batman, they are so well established. Right from the logo on their chest to the colour of their costumes. There is a lot of thought that goes into character development and India needs to take a leaf out of the west when we create new characters,” he stressed.
Narasimhan also emphasised on how animation has a longer shelf life as well. “If a live-action movie works, then there are sequels that may follow, but in animation once the film is released it can be taken to different markets and dubbed in various languages, thus more visibility and mileage.”
He then touched upon how important a role storyboarding plays in animation. “I have been for years been enamoured by the way Hanna Barbara executed their IPs like The Flintstones and The Jetsons and would always push any animation studio to take a leaf out of their book when they create their IPs,” added Narasimhan.
Finally, he mentioned about how the process followed by Japan helps them in faster delivery of content. “In Europe and US the voice artists first record their parts and only then the animators work on creating the animation, but in Japan they first execute the animation and then dub the voices which enables them to really focus on the animation much more than acting, and this is a learning we can adopt in the Indian industry,” he ended.
