“Baahubali has such a passionate fan base that there’s a constant awareness of not wanting to let that expectation down.”
For Ajey Lele, art director on Baahubali: The Eternal War, that pressure is part of the everyday creative process. Bringing the franchise into animation means more than translating a familiar world into a new medium. It means creating an animated world that feels distinctly its own while holding on to the spirit, scale and grandeur audiences associate with Baahubali.
Lele joined the project after working as a background painter on Avatar: The Legend of Aang. He interviewed with director Ishaan Shukla and started as a colour visual development artist, exploring how different locations should look and, more importantly, how they should feel. Some environments were already in development. Many remain under wraps because of the project’s ongoing production and NDA restrictions.
“Concept art comes first, rough explorations of how locations should look and feel, followed by cleanup and visual development, with the colour script happening in parallel,” Lele explained.
The challenge is not to reproduce the live-action films frame for frame. It is to understand what makes the world recognisably Baahubali and then reinterpret it through animation.
“It’s less about matching specific details and more about staying true to the spirit and scale people already know from Baahubali,” he said.
That approach gives The Eternal War room to develop its own visual identity. Animation offers a freedom live-action cannot always match. Environments can be built from scratch rather than being limited by existing locations or physical sets.
Most characters had already been designed before the environments around them were developed, but the process did not stay strictly linear. As the world evolved, some characters evolved with it.
“It wasn’t always a strict one-way process,” Lele said. “Some characters evolved alongside the environments as we went.”
Working with the director has been one of the most rewarding parts of the job. Lele describes Ishaan Shukla as one of the most collaborative filmmakers he has worked with, someone willing to listen and give ideas room to develop.
“Over time that collaboration has turned into something more than just a working relationship,” he said. “He’s become like a mentor and a friend to me.”
Meeting S.S. Rajamouli initially carried a sense of intimidation. “He’s not someone who makes people feel small around him,” Lele recalled.
Behind the scenes, Lele’s role as art director is to maintain the larger visual direction set by production designer Sam Klughertz and FLO, keeping the environments consistent as the animated world takes shape. The work has pushed him on architectural language, colour choices and the need to stay connected to the franchise without simply repeating what has already been seen.
The pressure of the fan base is real. So is the excitement. Baahubali: The Eternal War lets its artists explore a world audiences already feel connected to, while using animation to expand what that world can look and feel like.
“It’s also been genuinely fun, and one of the best learning experiences I’ve had so far,” Lele said.
His hope goes beyond recognition. “More than anything, I want people to walk away seeing how much potential India’s own stories and characters have.”
That is the quiet ambition behind the project. Take a world audiences already know and give it an entirely new canvas.
