Aaakhiri Raasta: Making a UPA style video

for those who don't know, Aaapki Poojita is a small webcomic that Adhiraj and I make, you can read it on its website or if you're charitable, you could read it on facebook.

Although we are following a story arc, we make it a point to try small digressions which may teach us a thing or two. One of them was this small video of one of our characters Bauji, who lands in a costly private hospital, and when the hospital finds out he doesn't have the money - they choose a different payment option : Aaakhiri Raasta.

At that time I was busy with something else, so Adhiraj and Shikhant worked together on the video. But it still it was not coming out. Some of the initital images were -

The initial idea at that time was to make a sort of horror video.

But then, we thought we could do better. And as a designer Shikhant works best when he has a clean cut reference. then he does magic.

So if going through the trouble of making a webisode, why not make a better, more classic something, where we get to learn something.

We decided to create a UPA style video with limited animation.

We drew the thumbnails all over again :

And gave Shikhant the reference, and made him watch all the old UPA cartoons :

By then Shikhant had his references, So he did his magic :

Then it was a matter of sitting, making :

PAN-ABLE BACKGROUNDS

CHARACTER DESIGNS - UPA STYLE

And Adhiraj had this grand idea of using music from Hrishikhesh Mukherjee/Basu Chaterjee films. Which went so well with the whole UPA look. Which is funny because at that time, lot of Basu C and Hrishikesh M films used to have cartoonist openings.

Swarnabha helped us with the animation we required. specially the walk cycle. First he made a tweening waali walk cycle, which we didnt like, so we asked him to make one for us with a complete, frame by frame hand drawn proper walk cycle. Which he did. he took his time, but he did it.