Bhubaneswar: Toy Story, Avengers, Kung Fu Panda, Jurrasic Park, Inside Out, Up – the list is endless. The films would have been rather limp without state-of-the-art , repor
Many such masterpieces have entertained cine lovers over the years. Closer home, love for animation made three engineering graduates forsake their corporate jobs to make videos, though on a much lower scale.
Siddharth Shankar, Ashok Kumar Purohit and Sushant Prusty quit their jobs to initially start the musical band, Odibeats, in 2015 and then make animated music videos.
Recently, they posted trailer of their first animated music video titled Falling in Love on YouTube that has got around 60,000 views in a span of one week.
“Animation is still in a nascent stage in our state. So, before releasing the final video we posted a trailer to judge the situation two weeks ago. We were quite enthused to see the response. There is a lot of demand for animation,” said Siddharth.
While Siddharth and Ashok have sung and composed the music, Sushant takes care of the animation part.
“We did a lot of research and found out that not much animation videos had been made in Odisha. While there are a few government awareness video, not many youngsters have taken up animation as their career although there are a number of schools teaching the art here,” said the singer.
Earlier during Nabakalebar, the state government had released a sand animation video by artist Manas Sahoo, The Telegraph reported.
The group said they had already received positive feedbacks from a number of Odia NRIs. “People from our state living in France, USA and Germany have written to us after watching the trailer. It has given us a lot of encouragement,” said Ashok.
They will release the five-minute video next week. The video is about how youngsters these days are confused in their relationships.
They are also ready with three other music videos.
“We started with a romantic concept but rest of the videos deal with social issues such as woman empowerment and child education. We want to experiment with various subjects,” said Ashok.
They will be releasing all the videos one after the other in the next six months.
The lyrics of the songs have been written in various languages, including English, Odia, Hindi and Urdu. That apart, they have also experimented with the music.
“We have infused various musical genres such as ballads, reggae, qawwali and also classical Odissi music. We want to attract more listeners and cater to the needs of various kinds of users,” said 27-year-old Siddharth.
The videos are being made under the guidance of a few Canada-based animators.
“We have roped in a few professional animators, who are working with local artistes to make the videos,” said Siddharth.