The coronavirus pandemic is only seen growing day by day and following personal hygiene, maintaining social distance, using face masks and avoiding stepping out of the houses are few ways to keep the deadly virus away from you. Toonz Media Group recently created an animated short to make everyone aware about the importance of wearing face masks during this pandemic. The idea to create a short started with the Kerala government reaching out to creative companies for creating animated covid prevention videos.
The process was tedious as the employees are working from home. “It was indeed a challenge to manage the process during lockdown, but luckily Toonz arranged work from home and helped with shifting everybody’s work stations before lockdown started,” mentioned Toonz Media Group CEO P. Jayakumar.
The message was very important and needed to reach out to maximum people in a short time span. The entire movie from script to screen happened in 10 days. The creative team at Toonz used Adobe Flash CC, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premier and Adobe After Effects for their work. Communication was integral as the entire team was aware that spreading the message had to be time bound and systematic.
The story concept and idea was conceived by an ex Toonz employee, illustrator, cartoon columnist and scriptwriter in Kerala, Mahesh Vettiyar. The visualisation for the short was done by the Toonz development team. The entire animated short was animated by the students at Toonz Academy, under the supervision and guidance of Toonz Animation staff. “That’s the best part of the video; it was animated by our own students,” added Jayakumar. The voice for the video was provided by Bilas Nair.
The video which is available to watch on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Toonz’s official page, has got good appreciation on social media, because of its quirky approach. The team at Toonz is currently working on a second video, focusing on the importance of washing hands, which will soon be out there for us all to watch.
Talking about the rise of the animation industry as the live-action is at a stand still, Jayakumar said, “Both fields have their importance in entertaining the audience. However we live in difficult situations now where social distancing has shut down film shoots and much more. In such situations, animation as a medium enables quick – turnaround programming when planned properly.”
The animated short is surely a quirky take on the current situation, spreading awareness amongst young and adults alike with 2D animation technique. The Kerala Government has also been using the video to spread the message to maximum people through various platforms.
