The ‘Peeping Monster’ won the ‘Best Animation- Professional’ Category Award at 2nd Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival 2013. This 2D Animation Short, directed by Nisha Vasudevan, (a promo producer at Star World) is targeted at people who would love to see imaginary creatures on screen.
Click Here to View the Short Film
Talking with AnimationXpress.com, Nisha Vasudevan, Director, The Peeping Monster’ shares
about the various factors that boosted her up in the making of this short.
The storyline of this short revolves around a ‘Monster’ who lives underground. His only experience of the world above him is through a hole in his ceiling. Even though the Monster is not among the human race, he keenly observes the daily happenings of the city that was just above him. Getting bored of the underground environment, the monster decides to move to the city and start a new lifestyle in that city, but it’s the human’s negative attitude towards him that doesn’t allow him to exist.
The character of the Monster has been inspired by Godzilla. The location setting in this short comprises of the busy life and commercialization of Mumbai City. “I chose the city location specifically to bring out the concept of how uncomfortable would human beings feel in sharing their space with monsters and their reaction towards any non-familiar creature.” Nisha highlights.
Different shades of blues and grays were used to bring out a gloomy look to the underground. But on the other hand, bright colourful shades highlighted the busy life of the city.
This short wasn’t pre-decided as such, but it all fell into place when Nisha started writing the script of this short in the form of a simple blog. Nisha further adds “The baseline of my story was to draw the attention of the viewers of this short, about the cruelty towards animals, and how people around are least interested to understand the animals around them and simply dub them as an inconvenience or as a menace off the cuff.”
Illustrator, Photoshop, Adobe After Effects software was used in the making of this short. The traditional 2D animation software called Pencil helped Nisha to draw frame by frame. She even used Macbook Pro and a Wacom Bamboo tablet to bring out a good quality short.
“I am very thankful to my Friends- Jack Zeniewski dubbed the narration, Itek, handled the sound design and Elvin, who helped me with the early artwork, storyboard and pre-production and turned this into a successful short.”, concludes Nisha