Insights into the making of 'Shaktimaan'
“Sky is the limit for a creator,” said Subhash Kotwal, an alumnus of Sir J J School of Art & NID and now the Dean, ISB&M Design School, addressing an auditorium packed with students and invitees at an interactive seminar highlighting ‘Production Process – The Making of Shaktimaan’. Conducted by BIG AIMS, a premier Animation and VFX Film-making Academy of Reliance Animation, the seminar aimed at balancing the educational needs of students with hands-on practical experience as the crew of the popular animation series conducted the sessions.
The technical and aesthetic basics of animation production, involving the three stages of pre-production, production and post-production were discussed by Anand Pandey, line producer and Vikram Veturi, director of the series. The discussion delved deep into the process pipeline from concept creation, character development and performance to compositing and post production. The seminar also brought to light interesting snippets from the series of Shaktimaan, global value of pursuing a career in animation, career options, and a general idea of what to expect in this fast growing industry.
“Trying to come across the screen with a character that people can relate to is the first challenge. In the series of Shaktimaan, audiences were already familiar with the live action hero ‘Mukesh Khanna’, so the evolution was to revive the original and give a new form because ‘Predictability brings in monotony’. The script was ably resurrected by Dhrubo Banerjee, Creative Initiative along with Jeffrey Scott,” said Veturi.
“Six years of continuous effort, many sittings and green signal from Mukesh ji, and lot of research under the mentorship of our CEO, Ashish Kulkarni, enabled us to get associated with Nickelodeon, the most popular kids channel and initiate the animated series of Shaktimaan. With 13 episodes completed and telecasted on the channel, the team continues to develop its creative content and we are aiming for 56 episodes to complete the series,” said Pandey.
Special guest of the day, Subhash Kotwal said, “Read, study, practice, delve, probe, investigate and, above all, be flexible, keep an open mind. The world is changing fast. Don’t get caught in the corner of the ring. Keep moving and have fun. It is all about effective storytelling and filmmaking; infuse the classical with modern software techniques. Sky is the limit for a creator.”
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