Cochin based WowMakers Studio, makers of the much appreciated 2D Olympic picture animation, have recently brought out a 2 minute 2D animated video ‘Alma Mater Play’ that was created for Alma Mater Store which makes customized merchandise for school and college students and corporate.
Spearheaded by Binny A Manikoth, conceptualized by Afsar Chandroth with Character Designs done by Seerow Unni, Animated by Vipin K P, Kumar Aanal, Vipin Das, music composed by young musician Ifthikar Ali, ‘Alma Mater Play’, follows an animated story of a young boy who is in need of a custom T-shirt for his college rock band, but unable to design it. But, life becomes easy for him when he creates the custom t-shirt with the help of AlmaMater Play.
So how did WowMakers nab this project? We hear this from Binny A Manikoth Animation Team Lead at WowMakers and he shares with AnimationXpress.com’s Zeenia Boatwala, by saying, “Impressed with our animated videos, Varun Agarwal -Co-founder of Alma Mater, approached us for creating an explanation for his service Alma Mater Play.”
The team jumpstarted work on the video by the end of July with brainstorming varied concepts and finally decided to bring out a humorous, animated explanation that would keep the auds gripped throughout, and then went on to illustrating the character sketches and successfully completed the video within a month’s time.
Sharing more on the brief given to WowMakers for bringing out this video, Binny adds, “Varun emphasized on bringing out a kick ass animated explanation for AlmaMater Play, which should be the coolest animated product explanation ever seen in India.”
After hearing this brief, concept artist of the studio, Afsar, came up with the story line of humorously connecting real life issues while trying to get a customized tshirt made.
Informs more, “After deciding on the storyline we went onto storyboarding and character designing. Next, we made a work chart that included timings for each shot and handed it over to our animators.”
The team had created the story line keeping the targeted audience in mind, but Varun wanted some tweaks to be carried out in the story.
Adds further, “Varun suggested some more inputs in the storyboard after which we reworked on the story and to make the video more interesting, we included darth vader.”
Following the “KISS principle” this team believes in explaining things in the simplest form and nods at 2D being the best medium for animated explanations.
Highlighting on the look and feel on this video, Binny, asserts, “My team came up with two different design styles after which the mood board was sent to the client and accordingly we settled for giving a cheesy look and feel for the characters.”
Creating the look of the animated character was one of the prime challenges faced by this team as they went through 3-4 revisions for making the character look perfect.
Asserts more, “Even when we all liked the initial sketches our client had other views, which made us get back to the client and know his favorites characters and animated movies, after which we came up with suitable character/style for the explanation.”
The entire video was brought out using Adobe Flash, Adobe After Effects, Logic Studio and FCP. Also, for making the video look more appealing, the team planned transitions from one scene to the next by transforming the background and morphing the character.
“Accomplishing this video within a month was great challenge, but the support from Alma Mater Team made it happen with ease”, concludes, Binny.