MIHIR LELE

Client

All India Bakchod (AIB) 

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Direction

All India Bakchod (AIB)

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Visualiser/Animator

Mihir Lele

 

Music

Mehar Chumble

 

Brief

The client wanted to re-create the pixelated world of Nintendo’s Super Mario, but give it a distinct Indian vibe. With the same game environment and gameplay as the original Super Mario, they wanted to add a lot of Indian elements to it.

 

Process

The script was worked on for over 2 months, and at a later stage, in tandem with the animation. The animation was done in Flash and Photoshop.

A very unusual process of filmmaking was followed while working on this project. The client would narrate only a part of the story, during an ideating session. I would then internalize their inputs and visualize that part of the story. At the next meeting, I would present the animation and we would discuss what parts were visually funny and what parts we could do without. After this, the next part of the storyline would be discussed and the same routine would be followed again. The client gave me complete freedom to visualize their script.

Although this was twice as much work for me, as an animator, because of the trial and error, it was a big opportunity to understand good narration and flow of story.

Deciding what worked and what could be made funnier, under the guidance of India's top comics helped me immensely in terms of my animation timing and storytelling skills.

The video did very well on their YouTube channel and has over 5.5 million views, since its release in May 2014.