‘Silly Point’
Seen the short animated clips during the IPL matches on TV? Where Dhoni, Virat, Russel and others engage in funny and interesting actions? Well, that’s Silly Point from the house of Delhi-based animation studio Tavrohi Animations, back with spoofs and quirky stories for this IPL season on channels and Hotstar. Though Tavrohi Animation is executing the entire process, the IP belongs to Star.
Riding on last year’s success of Silly Point, this year they’ve created a fresh and enhanced look for the same show. Moreover, this time Silly Point is integrated with script of Star’s pre match and post match shows. Based on research, they discussed all the possibilities in terms of execution with Star while they were scripting the show. The initial scripts came from Star which they built upon, without disrupting the basic structure.
Ravi Rao
Talking to AnimationXpress, Tavrohi Animations creative director Ravi Rao revealed, “Last year we used typical situational humour for the Silly Point series and the episodes were independent from one another. This year we are following a particular theme which binds all the episodes together. We had been preparing for the execution for a couple of months in advance as the turnaround times for these movies is very less (say 24 hours) and a lot of stories depends on the outcome of the matches which are unpredictable. We have already delivered 20 movies since the beginning of the 2019 tournament and now are delivering at a rate of four to five movies per week.”
This time they’ve also enhanced the production value and improved the stylisation of Silly Point. Setting a benchmark last year, this year the Tavrohi team is looking to up the ante. In fact, their themes and characterisation this time revolves around some of the hugely popular mobile and desktop multiplayer games. Speaking on the idea behind this, Rao mentioned, “The core of these games is rivalry, which is also coherent with the IPL. Our team kept on bouncing ideas along with the Star creative team during which the idea about popular video games was discussed. Drawing parallels from these games, we thought about some preliminary ideas, and using the popular terminologies from the games, we built our stories upon them.”
The animation format they’ve chosen is 3D because that’s where their expertise lies, and the style of animation is quite exciting to look at. Since the dates were announced months ago, they had enough time to do some research on what kind of animated content is being consumed online and on TV.
“Once the scripts are approved, our asset team swings into action in building the backgrounds, layouts and creating script specific props. At the same time, the animation team starts planning the shot breakdowns and gags. Parallely our designers and animators also started exploring on the look development. And during this process we achieved what you can see on the television. By the time all the assets are textured, rigged and ready for animation, the animation team is ready to begin their process. The lighting team too gets started progressively as the animations are done and sent for render. This entire process typically takes about 24 hours under the supervision of our creative department,” explained Rao.
Given that the team work under such short span of time to produce such episodes with quality stories told through animation, it’s understood that how challenging it must be for them. 3D animation is a laborious and time consuming process and the Tavrohi team addressed the issue by designing a production pipeline with super fast turnaround times.
Shikhar ‘Gabbar’ Dhawan
As Rao continues to inform, “It is quite challenging as the scripts are written at the 11th hour and we have no room for any mistakes. For this reason all our teams are backed by a strong R&D team who are continuously on the lookout for any technical problems that might arise and provide quick solutions for the same. Because of the popularity of the show from last year, people do identify and relate to the characters very easily. One challenge here was in terms of character design, as it can not be drastically different from the characters from 2018. For instance, Dhoni is always calm and composed, Virat, Yuvraj are aggressive, Shikhar Dhawan has a Gabbar Singh attitude. So, we observed and studied the personality traits of all the key characters and incorporated these personas in the animation which makes them more believable and relatable. We decided to keep improvising a little bit every year to maintain consistency.”
The animation industry in India is growing at an enviable pace with every passing day. Most TV channels as well as OTT platforms are demanding animated content as the market is niche but has gained huge attraction over the past few years and is continuing to do so. Thus, the trend of animated advertisements has also been in vogue presently as most of the makers want to explore the untapped genre that’s also beneficial for them in terms of revenue.
With a projected number of about 50 movies and a compilation of all of them at the end of the tournament, Silly Point has proved that this trend is here to stay for sometime now.
IPL has revolutionised the game of cricket in India and has opened up several opportunities for businesses linked to it. The viewership of IPL has already crossed 250 million and is ever growing. And with the success of animated content in advertisement and short spoofs or funny clips on TV and online, has gained huge significance.
“With past year’s Silly Point we realised that there is good appetite for Animation in Indian audience. Moreover, India has one of the highest numbers of TV channels/platforms for consuming video content in the world and they are constantly looking forward for newer content,” concluded Rao.
Tavrohi Animation has gained a name for itself and are currently in the process of developing their own IPs which are at different stages of production. They’re also doing some rigorous experimental projects in-house to explore more creative and efficient production techniques. We wish to see some great work down the line!
The post IPL gets interestingly animated with ‘Silly Point’! appeared first on AnimationXpress.
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