Making pictures speak

He8217;s the animation director of only the second full-length animation film to be made entirely in India. Upendraa Desai on the Return of Hanuman, his craft and his favourite creations

As a child, Upendraa Desai loved losing himself in the worlds of Spiderman, He-Man and Mowgli. When he passed out of JJ School of Arts in 1997, he knew he was finding a way back into that world8212;he was getting into animation. And he did. The artist is the animation director of Return of Hanuman, only the second full-fledged animation film to be made entirely in India.

When the script written by Anurag Kashyap arrived at his office in September 2006, Desai first brainstormed with a team of 20 layout artists, background artists and character designers before 300 plus technicians from Percept Picture Company and Toonz Animation India Ltd. joined in to have the film released in 16 months, a record of sorts. The result, though not Pixar-like wizardry, were images that tapped popular consciousness and struck a chord8212;Narad with a guitar slung on his shoulders, a computer-savvy three-headed Brahma, a He-manesque Rahu-Ketu and a modern-day boy Hanuman, a tail tucked in his school shorts.

Desai, who has seen the film twice in theatres, says the greatest high was to have his two-year-old son Mallhar react with enthusiasm. 8220;It feels great when kids respond to the subtle punches in the story. Watching the film with the audience was also a lesson in what not to do, when in scenes which we thought were funny, the kids didn8217;t,8221; says Desai, who heads a pre-production animation house Rufflines Animations it made Salman Khan8217;s animated track in the credits of Partner.

The Return draws liberally from Bollywood8212;from the Jai-Veeru like coin-tossing monkey duo to the goggles-sporting monkey a la Rajnikanth, who smokes and shoots defying the basic laws of physics and the six-pack sporting cool monkey with an obvious Shah Rukh Khan accent. 8220;That was a post Om Shanti Om addition though the other monkey gags and the Sholay sequences were there from the beginning. We also had a King Kong-like monkey whose heart beats for a girl, but not many got that reference.8221;

In taking the film from the storyboard to the drawing board, Desai had complete freedom, adding gags and characters to the script. 8220;We decided to show heaven as a conch and not a platform floating on clouds as normally seen in films. The Himesh Reshammiya and the Rajnikanth monkeys, the various modes of transport taken by the simians from all over the world were not part of the script. But Anurag was quite open to our additions, including to the sound and visual effects we incorporated. He heard out every single input from all the teams, from sound recordists to the graphic designers, because of which at the end of the day, everyone who worked on the project felt it was their film. He did restrain us when we went too wild though,8221; says Desai.

What does it take to make a scene come alive in an animation film? 8220;Every second of an animation film has 24 frames, each of which is drawn on the computer. So just imagine the number of frames one has to make for a 90-minute to two-hour long film,8221; says Desai. Return had 85 characters8212;quite a feat in itself.

In India, Desai8217;s craft is still young. In 1934, artist Gunamoy Banerjee made the country8217;s first animation film, Pea Brothers, produced by Kolkata-based New Theatres8212;a less than five-minute shot of a peapod bursting to release toy-like figures that play with one another. And it took 71 years more for Percept Pictures Company to produce its first full-length indigenous animation film, Hanuman.nbsp; This art also has little financial support here. Even the Indian cartoon channels aren8217;t ready to invest in their making, as it8217;s cheaper for them to dub foreign cartoons, rues Desai. 8220;The cost of making a good cartoon film is no less than that of an average multi-starrer. It takes normally three years to make a 90-minute-long cartoon film abroad,8221; says Desai. The technology available in India though adequate does not encourage artists to push the limits. 8220;Abroad, they often design new software for a film in terms of texturing, layering and other attributes of image-making. Cartoon film makers in India are yet to have the ability and the financial wherewithal to make new software. This is also because we make very few cartoon films which have focus on an international release unlike the Americans or the Japanese. But Percept8217;s approach to the Hanuman series is different. They want to make it a world class brand,8221; he says.

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Not everyone has been impressed by the film8217;s animation art but Desai defends himself. 8220;It may not be world class, but it8217;s definitely a benchmark for Indian animation. It is better than anything you have seen from India before given the time spent and money invested on the project,8221; he says.

Desai is also confident that the industry will see a boom. 8220;If the special effects in films like Chronicles of Narnia and Spiderman could be made in parts in India, why can8217;t that quality be reproduced in our films? By working on cartoons from different countries we have got a hang of their style, but what8217;s our style?8221;

His dream is to tell Indian tales beyond the occasional amateurishly done Panchatantra, Birbal or Tenali Rama cartoons. 8220;Abroad you have cartoons in all genres, appealing to all age groups. I would like to do a contemporary Indian thriller in cartoon.8221; So no more characters from history or mythology, right? He ponders for while, before saying, 8220;Shivaji, he has a background that can be animated.8221;