www.worldanimeclub.com
AgeThe firstLions
of Indian Historical
“Anime”
F
irst of all i would like to thank you for taking time to go
over this interview. I will start with asking you what was
the inspiration for Age of Lions?
It’s a pleasure. Age of Lions is the brainchild of our CEO at
Anitracks Media, Sudeep Chaudhari. We at Anitracks believe
that India has a rich Mythological as well as Historical culture.
More often than not it’s mythology that takes the center stage
in animation. However we want to focus on the rich historical
aspect through our debut series ‘the Age of Lions’ which focuses
on the story of two kids growing up in a war torn Mauryan during
Ashoka & Sushim’s struggle for power. The environment sets the
basis for a perfect story which will not only cover history but
also a lot of fantasy elements to make it work on a global scale.
Also this series will mostly target the age group of 15+ but will
also have elements that will rope in the younger generation of
viewers.
How did u come up with each character’s personality and
from what did you inspire yourself for them?
We have been researching on characters & the period for the
better part of 2012 & it’s proved to be very fruitful. What kinds
of clothes they wore, the environment settings, their stature &
everything else is taken into consideration. We had our main
protagonists & antagonists pretty much visualized when we
started discussing the series & as we go on there will be a ton of
interesting character reveals some part of of actual history while
others which will be necessary to add depth to the story. For
example Sushim in the series will have 4-5 different royal attires
depending on his mood. Ashoka himself will go through a few
appearance shifts throughout the series. However we needed
to keep the look of the characters such that it conveys global
acceptance rather than just focusing on the Indian viewership.
So at times we take certain design & appearance changing calls
when need.
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The fun part of working on this series is that there is massive
room for character creation & world expansion & we are taking
all of this into consideration to make sure this series makes it’s
mark in the animation sector.As for me personally, when I was
first approached for this project in April 2012 I was a bit skeptical
because of the sheer scale. However when I was told that they
wanted to approach the series in pseudo Anime style I knew I
had to give it a try. Ever since then, there’s not been a day that i
haven’t had fun while working on this project.
If you don’t mind , could u tell the readers the steps u take in
preparing when working on the “project”?
Well I’m not going to go too much in detail but I can tell you
the four fold process involved in it’s creation:First off Sudeep &
our lead writer, Shamik Dasgupta of Ramayan 3392 AD & Daksh
fame did a ton of research on the timeline & the aesthetics
involved with the series for over 5 months.I came on board this
series after that phase was completed & further researched
on the design elements along with Sudeep. We then came
up with a list of the most prominent characters of season 1 &
began with the character model sheet creation process. We
also have a background concept team which focuses on that
particular aspect of world creation.After that we move to the
preproduction phase of the series of the series where the script
is converted into animatics scene by scene. For those unfamiliar
with the term, animatics is like a blue print of rough animated
key frames that give the final animators an idea of the camera
angle, perspective & overall feel of the scene at every point. We
are currently in this phase. is done in Anitrack’s Mumbai studio.
After the animatics of each ep are completed they will
be then sent to our own production house in the Phillpines that
will handle final animation. We have a ton of experienced talent
working there who I’m sure will make this series that much more
special.
Anime Reign | Issue 2 | 2013