Express News Service
Bored of animated films from the West? The doctor-turned-filmmaker Ezhil Vendan has come up with India’s first 3D animated mythological film — Hanuman vs Mahiravana 3D. He calls the film “a first-of-its-kind effort in India”. Ask him how the film is different from the ones we’ve seen, and he says it’s “because it’s a 3D animation film in a theme that has not been done before. We’re happy with the attention the film has received before the release. The number of screens we’re getting is on par with feature films. We are sure that this will bring about a change in the industry.”
Ezhil says that the film can only be compared with one another film from Tamil Nadu — the Rajinikanth-starrer Kochadaiiyaan. “While that was based on the electronic form of animating — motion capture — we’ve resorted to animating the shots by hands; so it’s more artistic in nature. We employed teams from all around the world such as USA, Japan and Mexico to work on this film.”
Explaining the technicalities of the film, he adds, “We work on computer-generated models that have animated skeletons in them. The frames in between are generated by the computer. The keyframes which handle the movements of the characters are done by animators.”
The whole concept was developed by Ezhil and his partner Narayanan Vaidyanathan. “He took care of the writing and music, while I handled the visuals and direction. We’ve defined the world of Ramayana with details we have been discussing over a period of ten years,” says Ezhil, who spent four years on the film’s production.
“We know that mythology is fertile territory where a lot of native stories are there to be told. If we give them a treatment on par with Hollywood, it will look really great. Hollywood itself is getting saturated with content, and that’s why they’re revisiting classics such as Sleeping Beauty.” Hanuman Vs Mahiravana will hit the screens tomorrow in Hindi as well as in Tamil, under the title Hanumanum Mayilravananum across the country.
