CHHOTU
When two of my cousins produced a graphic novel, having done lots of book trailers in the past, I decided that I wanted to make an awesome motion comic style trailer for this cinematic graphic novel. Publshed by Penguin we worked with them to make a wide variety of content leading up to the book launch and for the book launch itself. Here is the synopsis of the graphic novel.
The year is 1947. The British are slowly marking their departure from the country. And while partition looms large over India,
Chhotu, a student-cum-paranthe-cook in the dusty gullies of Chandni Chowk, has other things on his mind—like feeling the
first flushes of love of his crush, Heer, the new girl at school.
When he finally decides to make a move, Chhotu soon finds the town’s aloo has suddenly gone missing, reluctantly embroiling
himself into the world of corruption, crime and dons. As he struggles to understand what freedom truly means, Chhotu realizes
one thing is for certain—that his world, and the world of those around him, is about to change forever.
Set against the backdrop of partition and the horrors that followed, Chhotu is a coming-of-age story of an unlikely hero and a
parable of a past that doesn’t feel too removed from the present.
I roped in Arush Dev who I have worked with many times and we got to creating a style and an idea. This is the finished launch trailer.
THE LAUNCH TRAILER
Given the content of the graphic novel, it was modelled like a bollywood movie, we decided to make a trailer.
THE PLANNING
We knew going in that we needed layered assets and that we needed to make a trailer. Taking frames from the graphic novel we placed them in order and made a rough trailer.
ANIMATIC - 01
ANIMATIC - 02
MOTION TEST
As Ayushi was finishing the book, we asked her to make a few of the illustrations as layered frames that we could use in 3D space. This was the first test we did, taking her assets and the frame, layering them out moving a camera through it along with some basic character animation.
BLURBS for TEXT
PRE-LAUNCH
BREAKDOWNS
This is the first thing we released for the pre-launch, we had a few quotes from Penguin and didnt want to give too much away.
MOTION COMIC
This is how we built a shot, with layering of 2D assets in 3D space in after effects and animating them.
3D BOOK
The book shot at the end needed to be built in 3D. This is the breakdrown of that portion.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
This is the kind of social media content we created along with blurbs and event posts.
CREDITS
CLIENT : Penguin Random House India
COMISSIONING EDITOR : GURVEEN CHADHA
AUTHORS : VARUD GUPTA & AYUSHI RASTOGI
ILLUSTRATOR : AYUSHI RASTOGI
MOTION GRAPHICS : VIDUR GUPTA & ARUSH DEV
THANKS FOR WATCHING!
