Film in the Making
Not just an ordinary tale being told, A New Dawn is an attempt to consciously relive a significant moment in history which lives and breathes its repercussions into our present and most decidedly, into the future dawn of the Indian nation.
The Challenge
The creative world is vast but there are the rare and few human personalities since the dawn of time who have a canvas even vaster in scale and depth, making it almost impossible to capture or do justice to even a fragment of their lives. And yet, the team at Studio Eeksaurus was presented with this very challenge when they were asked to make an animation film on Sri Aurobindo.
The Initial Research
The creative team extensively researched the life events of Aurobindo Ghose and the atmosphere in the country at the time. It is impossible to capture his life in its entirety and hence, only some of the major milestones of his early life were chosen for the film. Going further, Studio Eeksaurus shifted from the expected computer generated graphics to an extremely complex but rewarding 2D hand-painted animation in which each frame is drawn, painted and brought to life. A unique art style was developed for the film after studying various painting styles used by animation films all over the world.
Conception
Reliving a Forgotten Chapter of History
Script Development
The script development started on 11 September 2021 with the research about Sri Aurobindo's life and its major events. On 28 October 2021, a team from Studio Eeksaurus came to Puducherry to know more about Sri Aurobindo and align with the project team on the remaining goals towards the completion of the film. After several iterations, the first version of the script was finished on 26 February 2022. This first version was then further revised and the final version was completed on 18 October 2022.
Storyboard Development
The storyboard is a visualisation of the script using static frames. The development started on 7 March 2022 with a placeholder narration to guide the artists towards the next stage of Key animation. Here are some glimpses.
The storyboard development completed on 30 November 2022. Here is a glimpse of the "Behind the scenes".
Key Animation, Colouring & Compositing
The key animation process started on 1 December 2022 and ended on 31 May 2023. During this stage, each frame was sketched, animated, refined and made ready for colouring and compositing. Here are some of the frames from the ongoing colouring stage which started on 1 March 2023.
Voice-Over Recording
During the Key animation stage around mid-Feb 2023, different voice-over recordings were tried out by the Studio. Finally, Victor Banerjee's voice was recorded to portray the voice of Sri Aurobindo, while Deepti Naval's voice was recorded as the narrator's voice. To capture the essence and authenticity of the characters, the recording process involved careful attention to details. The voice recording stage ended on 31 May 2023.
Here's a glimpse from the voice-over recordings
