Toonz to bring Lord Shiva on telly screen

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA: Animation major Toonz Animation India is gearing up to unveil a new format in the business with a new series titled Tales of Lord Shiva.

Dubbed as a first of its kind, Tales of Lord Siva will tell the un-explored stories of Lord Siva in his various forms. The series would combine the captive beauty of narrative story telling and subtle animation punctuated with dialogues creating a Graphical Movie for television.

According to company officials, the format lends good creative freedom to the Toonz team to experiment and the treatment is expected to stand out in the midst of many programmes appearing in the Indian and international animation industry.

Pointing out that the series is a premium product due to its visual and musical standards with its uniqueness and variety, P Jayakumar, CEO, Toonz Animation India, said: “the speed at which we can produce without compromising the creative requirements is a huge positive in this kind of production”.

“The look and feel is very unique and it varies widely based on the stories portraying Shiva in one of his many forms. Many illustrations are used to tell the story and combined creatively and intelligently using wonderful cinematic grammar to bring out the emotions and actions’ says Hari Varma, the Creative Producer of the Series.

The visuals in the series are enhanced by music and rendition by renowned Hindustani Classical singer-composer Pandit Ramesh Narayan. The show has generated a lot of interest from national production houses and broadcasters and the Tales of Lord Siva is expected to be telecast in English and other Indian regional languages.

The series is being made in Toonz Animation’s facility at Thiruvananthapuram. Toonz, which is part of the Comcraft Group, is also working on a 52-episode series with Canadian, French and British partners.  Other co-production partners are from the US and Spain.

The animation company is also working on production of a full-length feature film project titled ‘Tommy and Oscar, The Movie’ for Rainbow Studios, Italy and a television series called ‘Willo the Wisp’ for Animoon Plc of the UK.

It has also recently closed a mega deal with Marvel Studios for doing 104 episodes of Marvel characters and also another three picture DVD deal with Paramount Pictures.