Founded in 2011 by NID Alumni Avinash, Anuj and Swarup, and based out of Pune, Girgit Studios, has recently delivered two animated television commercials for DANONE. The studio brings design consultancy and production services for animation, web and film making creative requirements for Educational, Promotional and Entertainment purposes of its clients including Animations videos for TV, online broadcast. Character designs, Illustrations, Ad campaigns etc.
In the past, founders of Girgit Studios have won several recognitions and awards for their short film UKADI PUKADI in the ‘Best International student film’ category, at TASI organized ANIFEST ’09, selected as the‘2nd best International animation film’, at MIFF 2010, received ‘Jury mention award’ for best student film at FICCI BAF 2010 and grabbed an Official selection at CHITRAKATHA’09, in the international student’s film category.
Targeted at primary and secondary school kids of 8 years age, this tvc titled ‘Fundooz Chuski’ of 32 seconds duration and Fundooz Flavored Yoghurt of 16 seconds duration was executed by a team of 13 artists at GIRGIT. Fundooz is a superhero kid mascot created for marketing DANONE’S kid’s product range.
The concept of the TVC highlights the irresistible taste of the drink for which all kids get desperate to grab hold of the last pack that’s left in their school canteen. The ad establishes the drink to be the choice of the smartest kids and also sends a subtle message of sharing with your friends. The team at Girgit studios worked on 6 – 8 varied concepts for the TVC’S, created the animatics and finalised this one post multiple rounds of discussions with the DANONE Team.
Currently the TVC’s can be seen on leading kids channels Disney, POGO, Cartoon Network, Hungama and Nick.
Girgit Studios bagged this TVC project after successfully delivering an 8 minuter animation short film for DANONE’S prime product called ‘Fundooz Chuski’.
Speaking to Animationxpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala about how Girgit studios grabbed this tvc series project, Swarup Deb, Co- Founder/ CEO of Girgit Studios, shares, “DANONE was launching a new range of dairy products for kids in India, Delhi and northern India region being their initial launching zones.
We were approached by their Delhi based agency Impact Communication Pvt. Ltd that was looking for a studio with NID Animation Alumni to produce an 8 min short animation film for their main product called Fundooz Chuski on a very tight deadline. They had the story ready and wanted to convert it into an animated film that they could use to promote their drink in schools amongst kids while spreading the importance of having a balanced diet.
We finished the 8 min film in less than 1.5 months time and also gave them enough access to be able to participate in the production at every crucial stage of production and make it just the way they wanted. The film worked well for them and when they decided to launch the product nationally and make TVCs for them, they had just one name their mind, GIRGIT s.”
According to Avinash, Director of the TVC, Pre-Production for this TVC’s was the toughest phase as the brand building team always found it hard to pre-visualize how things would look once the animation is final. It has taken around a month to complete the pre-production for the Tvc’s.
Avinash adds more, “We created around 6-8 concepts with animatics for DANONE get an idea which concept works best for their brand. This phase is the tug-off war between the brand team and the creative team where the brand team wants to maximize the information about the product while the creative teams want to make the story interesting enough for the audience to remember the ad.”
Coming to the look and feel of the Tvc’s, the FUNDOOZ Brand Team wanted maximum of an orange colour feel to the entire tvc as orange is the brand colour. The characters designed for the TVC were a derivative of previously established brand mascot, The Fundooz Superhero Kid and Girgit studios had to run their imagination high for creating interesting characters, which would suit the tvc plot and also draw it in a way that would match the style of the mascot.
Anuj, Chief Creative Officer of GIRGIT Studios says, “It was a tricky decision of which elements would look appealing in orange and which wouldn’t, we wanted to maintain the charm of the TVC and also wanted to keep considerable orange colour levels for which I feel the background art team did a commendable job of blending the colours very well.”
It took around 15 days to accomplish the Production for the Tvc’s and the studio studied action analysis of skateboarders. The animation team at Girgit Studios viewed and internalized the weight balancing, hand and body gestures and stunts done by skateboarders.
Smitha who was a part of the Animation team says, “More than the pre-planned actions of the characters, their reactions were fun to crack and animate. Adding small nuances like the flying spectacle of the canteen kaka, the ‘Oh shit’ reaction of the Sardar Kid, Squirrel and birds in the background actually made the animation more interesting for the kids to watch.”
For animating the TVC, Girgit Studios have incorporated 3D elements in the Tvc’s including the skateboards and pack shots. To give a 3D look and feel to the 2D animation and art was achieved using Adobe After-effects, which helped GIRGITs to establishing scenes nicely while seamlessly merging the 3D pack shots throughout in the 2D animation.
“Also, the studio has made use of a couple of plugins of Adobe After-effects to reduce the work of animating character shadows.” says Dhiraj, the tech lead at GIRGIT.
Commenting on using the blend of 3D and 2D for the Tvc’s , Swarup asserts, “ As far as winning points of 2D over 3D are concerned, if a short animation has lots of different yet important characters doing short actions, we prefer animating in 2D as 3D needs its own character setup time. Also a lot of machine rendering time can be saved in doing so. If there are less characters doing long actions we might prefer 3D. It’s the story that calls for the medium.
The final completion of the tvc took around 3 months and the 2D animation of the tvc is done in Adobe Flash whereas the 3D animation is done in Autodesk Maya and the TVCS are composited in Adobe After –Effects and Editing done in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Currently Girgit Studios has completed work on a Music video for an upcoming talented Artist Arish , a series of animations for Cyberroam technologies product named Net Ginnie developed along with and also they are working on a unique animation short based upon the folk tale from Sikkim is in pipeline funded by Adivasi Arts Trust.