MIHIR LELE

Client

Abish Mathew for "Son Of Abish"

 

Writers

Abish Mathew

Pranav Tonsekar

Anuya Jakatdar

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Visualiser/Animator

Mihir Lele

 

Music

Nigel Rajaratnam

 

Brief

"Son of Abish" is a widely popular online variety show, that features hilarious weekly news take downs & special celebrity guests who talk & perform for the audience. . Abish Mathew, the creator of the show, wanted an animated segment in one of the episodes of the show that spoke about various aspects of sexual health amongst teenagers through a series of nursery rhymes. 

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Process

After deciding the character designs and visual style, a rough soundtrack with the nursery rhymes and dialogue was recorded to lock the timeline for the film, before I began animating. I then did a shot breakdown and visualised the screenplay for each of the 5 nursery rhymes. As per the brief, each rhyme had to have a distinct visual style and yet all of them had to have a homogenous visual language throughout. Mr. Mathew gave me complete freedom to visualise the script and take all creative decisions pertaining to the screenplay. 

 

I thought the best way to visualise this film was to keep the shots busy, interesting and dynamic- not too boring and biological diagram-y. Some portions of the song have big names of different STDs. So I tried to make each rhyme as visually interesting as possible and compliment the words. Otherwise, people would tune out with the heavy duty names. I introduced a lot of characters (of the different STD's) that I made sure looked somewhat similar to the actual virus but also fit well with the overall visual language. I wanted the video to be visually happy and light.

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The film was hand drawn and colored using a digital tablet in Adobe Animate (formerly known as Adobe Flash) and composited on Adobe After Effects. 

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Owing to the tight deadline, I visualised the screenplay simultaneously while animating. The lip sync animation began only once the entire film was animated.

The 3 minute film was completed in 5 weeks.

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Post its release, the video was well received by audiences and a couple of well known media houses even ran a story about it-

Indian Express

Scroll.in

The Story Pedia

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The film was also the official selection at Anifest India 2018 in the commissioned section of the "TASI Viewers Choice Awards"