Myth-o-Katha is back! The animated GIF series from the house of Vaanarsena Studios has returned with its second season from 14 January after a little hibernation.
Available across several social media platforms, Myth-o-Katha focuses on one mythological character through three GIFs a week and is out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The second season has started with a fresh batch of characters and not all of them were heroes.
Vaanarsena Studios’ ‘Senapati’ Vivek Ram revealed the reason for this temporary slumber : “Myth-o-Katha as you know, is entirely self funded and its largely in the ‘Art for Art’s sake’ zone. We all have bills to pay, so this format had to take a break while we went out and did some paid projects for clients. We also had to figure out what more we could do with this format, which is how the Myth-o-Katha AR Stories app we developed was born.”
Vaanarsena Studios always wanted to keep these mythological characters in limelight, not letting go of the very intriguing Indian culture. Their idea was to reach a younger audience which included kids who are not aware about the Indian culture. “As kids have a shorter attention span, engaging them with something interesting was the main motive, and hence this format came in the upfront,” Ram commented.
The AR cards can help kids do three activities like, read the information of the character, colour it, and see the character in AR. One just needs to download the Myth-o-Katha AR Stories app, which is available on Android and iOS, and the AR cards are available for the technology admirers on the official website of Vaanarsena Studios.
Vaanarsena Studios’ research behind Myth-o-Katha is very extensive. Every piece of information is cross verified across multiple sources. Indian stories generally do not have specific sources and there are multiple variations available. Thus, the work gets tougher to check as many sources and compile whatever suits best.
Ram added, “Now that the AR cards are out, we are also designing our animations to suit the cards, so things have gotten a lot more interesting for us. We’ve started this set with Skanda, a character many know, but a name that not many are familiar with. He’s also a character with variety in his stories. This season will also have more characters than the last season (the first season had six).
Though Ram didn’t give out too much on which characters are in the slate for this season, we will get to see a famous ‘Vaahan’ and Raavan soon getting GIF-ed.
Apart from the animated GIFs, Vaanarsena Studios are planning to go on a larger scale apart from AR. They’re aiming to do longer stories, interactive AR, and possibly books! Ram noted, “Everything largely relies on our available bandwidth. We should be taking on more interns to help us with this.”
With all the innovative and exciting things in place, Myth-o-Katha season two looks promising to open a new arena in animation.
What are you waiting for, catch Myth-o-Katha now!
(This article has been jointly written by Sharmindrila Paul and Yugandhara Shete)
