Big Animation

L to R: Chand, Kamlesh Pandey, Ashish S.K., Xray, Pratchi, Nupur

Chand took me to visit a really amazing animation studio in Pune called “Big Animation”. We were treated to lunch by CEO Ashish S.K. and I was honored to meet one of Bollywoods most well known writers Kamlesh Pandey. We had a spirited discussion about Indian literature, Joseph Campbell and Bollywood film making. They’ve really got it together. Big Animation is working on both 2-D and 3-D animation. They have several hundred employees and their studio is totally state of the art. They showed me some previews of their work on a project called Hey Krishna. There are two versions of it and both look very good. They aren’t cutting any corners. One is a 3D animation for broadcast televsion and the other is a traditional 2D version for theatrical release. The 2D animation looks every bit as good as Dreamworks Prince of Egypt. Big Animation uses Flash as well as several proprietary systems and according to Vikram, the director n of Hey Krishna, they are torturing Flash in ways it was never intended. The artwork is stunning.