Apr 13, 2017

Cartoon Network Seeks India for "Lamput" Series

The concept of "Lamput" is simple. An orange gooey creature that can transform into an infinite number of objects tries to elude the pursuit of a couple of scientists. Produced by Turner Asia Pacific for Cartoon Network's Short Shorts program, each short film is only 15 seconds long.

Lamput was produced in India by Vaibhav Studios in Mumbai. To date, 46 15-second microshorts have been produced, and the studio is currently producing a new season of two-minute shorts. Turner currently airs Lamput worldwide on Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and POGO channels.

Lamput is a fresh take on Indian animation, with sharp animation timing and engaging design that sets it apart from the rest. Lamput is also credited as one of the first Indian productions to be marketed by Pitch Bible and broadcast worldwide. The series recently won the Best Case Study Award at FICCI Best Animated Frames, an important annual animation award in India.

Cartoon Brew spoke with Vaibhav Kumaresh, creator of Lamput and founder of Vaibhav Studios, about how this unique series came to be.

Cartoon Brew: How did you get started in animation and when did you set up your studio, and how did you get your start in 1998 when you completed your post-graduate degree in Animation Film Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. I then worked for five years at Famous House of Animation in Mumbai, where I directed several animated shorts and TV commercials. However, I had a strong desire to make longer stories and in 2003 I decided to leave Famous to work on short films for children. That was the birth of Vival Studios. My wife Suranjana and I started it together, and soon many friends joined us.

This is Vaivav Kumaresh: Vaivav Kumaresh: We direct and produce a lot of commercials and promos for TV stations. That is our main work. As a result, our main clients are advertising agencies like Ogilvy & Mather, Lowe Lintas, and Grey Worldwide, and TV stations like Disney, Turner, Star TV, and Viacom.

One of our most popular characters is Simpoo, an animated math teacher who appears on a youth-oriented Indian music channel called Channel V.

We have also worked with a number of other companies and agencies, including the likes of Disney, Turner, Star TV, and Viacom.

Most of our work, however, is very strongly "local" and made primarily in Hindi and other regional Indian languages. Other popular projects include the Amarong Battery Campaign, Brady's anti-AIDS campaign, Chulburi, and Vodafone Zumi.

We love to tell stories to Indian audiences and we do it using all animation mediums: hand-drawn, stop-motion and digital 3D. Personally, I draw heavily from my own life and experiences, and as a result, our work has a strong contemporary Indian flavor. We have created some of India's most popular animated characters and have fans among children as well as adults. In addition, we have collaborated with Bollywood superstars Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, creating animations for their feature films. We have also produced animated music videos and public service films.

Our most familiar content is our first animated feature film, a 100-minute Hindi film that we produced entirely ourselves. It is our modest attempt to bring Indian audiences back to the cinema and get them to watch Indian animated films.

And "Lamput" is your first series

Vaibhav Kumaresh: Lamput is our first foray into episodic content. In between projects, when I was relatively out of work, I would write down exciting ideas and try to pitch them to TV stations, and Lamput (pronounced Luhm-Poot) was one such idea. It was basically a "lump" of clay that kept transforming to escape two men trying to catch him. I came up with the orange lump and was able to sell it to Nickelodeon. A few years later, I learned that Cartoon Network was looking for Asia Pacific content. So I reworked the pitch and shared the lamputto with Turner Asia Pacific. They liked it very much.

What is the general process for writing an episode of Lamput? Do you pitch each episode board to Cartoon Network prior to production? We brainstorm with each other about possible gags and how to tighten up the story. Almost everyone in the studio contributes by verbally narrating concepts, doodles and boards. Anything promising will be written down. But since the premise of the story is primarily visual, in most cases it is only when we see something in motion in the form of animation that we know if it will work or not The 15-second gag format is very delicate. The slightest tweak in timing or pose can make or break a film. In some cases, animatics are redone over and over until they are completely satisfied, and once satisfied, they try to keep the exact taste until the end.

And animatics are the best way to pitch an idea to Cartoon Network. Once they say yes, production begins. The process is fairly traditional. The keys and all the intermediate parts that follow are drawn down in Flash, with little or no motion tweening. The backgrounds are all drawn in Photoshop and composited again in Flash.

The series has a distinctive visual and animation style, with a strong emphasis on cartoon timing and movement, and a stylistic return to mid-century character design. All of these are characteristic elements of contemporary Indian animation. What prompted you to explore this direction? Personally, I was inspired because I am thrilled and grateful to work with the very inspiring and talented artists at our studio. While pitching "Lamput" to Cartoon Network, I came across the work of an animation artist named Anand Babu. His work had a beautiful sense of simplicity, madness, and timing that I loved. I strongly felt that if Lamputto ever got off the ground, he should definitely be a part of it. And it did. Anand took Lamput to another dimension with his input into the script, design, and animation.

Here are Anand's comments:

The animation and design style was not so intentional. I was very much influenced by classic shows, from Tex Avery's cartoons to Jehndi Tartakovsky's "Dexter's Lab," and that gradually permeated the show, especially the animation style. As the episodes progressed, Vyhav and I, and I realized that there were characters that we were influenced by. It evolved in its own way.

Other magicians include Ganesh Kothare, who drew all the backgrounds almost single-handedly, and independent music composer Lot Shah, who meticulously designed the sound and music.

As a studio owner, what do you think needs to be done to help the Indian animation industry shift its focus from being outsourcing-centric to developing more original IP and telling Indian stories? That is the best way to shift the focus. Nearly 90% of the Indian animation industry is dominated by studios that outsource. I think their priorities are clear. Film and storytelling are secondary. And I don't think this focus of theirs will change in the near future.

According to me, the remaining 10% make films and make money to tell stories. It is about striving to create an engaging story for the audience with limited resources. They must make an effort to create an engaging story for their audience with limited resources.

Filmmaking is only one small aspect of the process. Distribution, promotion, and multiple screening platforms are what we need to learn more about. Bollywood is a great example for Indian animation to follow. In the last 100 years, Bollywood has evolved from traditional folk theater to one of the largest film industries in the world. We must strive to build a similar audience for our animated films. It is our only way forward.

We have not spent enough time telling our own stories and making films our own way. And it shows in our previous films. But we are learning, and as a nation of storytellers, I am confident that we will soon produce original and refreshing animated films.

Concept & Direction: Vaibhav Kumaresh Screenplay, Design & Animation: Anand Babu Color Art & Background: Ganesh Kotare, Anand Babu Ganesh Kotare, Anand Babu Music & Sound Design Lotto Shah Other Sound Design Tuning Fork Inbetweens Saksham Arora, Isha Mangalmurti, Punit Goel, Gokul CJ, Diksha Barua, Aparna Kulkarni, Dipanjan Datta Chowdhury Additional Animation Vikram Veturi, Rajiv Aipe, Vaibhav More, Vijay Raivore Production Directors: Bhavesh Gondalya & Sajid Khan Produced by Vaibhav Studios (Mumbai, India)