BENGALURU: An eleven-member animators’ team from the city has come up with the first Kannada 3D animated short film. The short film is all set to be released on YouTube on the occasion of Ganesha Chaturthi today. The 20-minute-long fantasy film, titled Gentle Giants, narrates the story of an underwater invasion and sea creatures’ struggle to deal with human intrusion and the pollution that follows. The short film has been completely made in CGI (Computer-generated imagery), an application used for creating scenes or special effects in films and television.
Speaking about the short film, Vikas C, writer, director and the animation project lead, says, “Gentle Giants has been made on par with international standards, but with a local touch. We rarely see any short films for children in regional languages. So we decided to start the trend. The story is inspired by the struggles of marine life, including oceans, which we read, hear and mostly ignore every day. The story revolves around how a set of sea creatures’ fight against human invasion,” he says.
“Of course, we took a cue from Hollywood about how films like Finding Nemo could become a hit among kids and adults alike. Keeping all that in mind, we have come up with Gentle Giants,” Vikas adds. The team took almost one-and-a-half years to finish the project and they have spent over `2 lakhs on the film. “When we took the script to a few production houses, they raised doubts about how the short film, that too a 3D animated short film would ‘work’ for them. Hence, we spent money from our pockets and completed the film,” Vikas says.
All the characters in the film are sea creatures. “It is not just another short film. There is love, there is heroism, there are fights, there is compassion and struggle and every ingredient that can entertain and educate kids. I hope Gentle Giants will encourage others to take up 3D animation short films and make some educative and entertaining films for kids,” he concludes.
The eleven-member team includes Vikas C, Devaiah MN, Darshan M, Nayana S, Jayanth Kumar C, Punith CR, Mani Yadav, Sunil M, Anusha BM, Pruthviraj KR, Darshan N. They are all city-based animators working in different companies across the city.
‘Replicated marine life at Murudeshwara’
Vikas says, “Since we were doing it all by ourselves, we did not have high configuration preferable systems exclusively for this. So we did a lot of research about bringing out a high quality product using the available resources. We implemented trial and error method as well. To get a better and bigger picture about marine life we all went scuba diving in Murudeshwara and observed the sea creatures and we replicated it while creating 3D characters for Gentle Giants.”