About Us

What began as a three member group with nothing but a belief in our potential to create great animation, is now a eleven year old studio with a sterling reputation for the quality of our work.

From graphics, animation and special effects in commercials, corporate films, feature films, titles for film and television, visualisation and preproduction design for both ads and features, to illustration and design, children’s books, educational textbooks, the studio has expanded its creative outreach to many different avenues often setting new standards of excellence.

The Studio

It was in 1997 that the three founder directors started with the belief that an animation studio needed to be a place where we searched for our artistic and national identity through this amazing art form. We got together without the slightest backing or support and no infrastructure to speak of. Today, our greatest sense of satisfaction stems from the fact that we never compromised our principles in the most trying of situations. We worked the razors edge balancing our desire to pour our souls out in our films while running the studio doing commercial work which paid the bills with an equal amount of sincerity & zeal.

The Team

Chetan Sharma

Considered by many to be India’s foremost classical 2D animator, started in animation when he was 15 and worked his way with a commitment and attention to detail that have resulted in some of the best animation India has produced.
Winner of the National Award as the Best Animator in 2005, and a self taught artist, he inspires passion and devotion towards the drawn art and continues to hold aloft the flag of 2D animation in creating new and exciting characters and worlds. His experience in live-action films, designing and storyboarding some of the most widely acclaimed commercials and films of our time like Happydent, XBox 360 & Ekalvya has also honed the cinematic quality of his vision.

Gayatri Rao

Having done her B.F.A. from the College of Arts, Delhi and Masters in Design (M.Des.) in Visual Communication, from IDC, IIT-Powai, Bombay, where she was a pioneered animation as a medium by creating her first short film ‘CALLS OF ANIMALS’ on alternative teaching methods. She has had the rare distinction of doing an internship at Walt Disney Studios, Florida sponsored by UNICEF where she grasped the spirit of classical animation which she passed on to her hungry for knowledge colleagues back in India. She also created as her project there, a minute long film on female infanticide which moved many of her distinguished mentors at Disney.

She also pioneered stylised animation commercials in India and directed the animation for Mahakapi, a film based on the Jataka tale of the Monkey King, for CFSI, which won the prestigious UNESCO Award in 1997. A true designer whose clear and often critical insight and aesthetics informs all the studio’s projects, her vision for Raju & I helped it to transcend the general limitations of a public service message film to become the most critically acclaimed Indian animation film, winning her the National Award for Best Animation Director in 2005.

She loves to create and started RAWWORKS a project which seeks to bridge the gap between the traditional and contemporary by creating utility products inspired by traditional and tribal art forms.

Sumant Rao

An aeronautics engineer from IIT, Mumbai, he took to the design stream in IDC, IIT and with Gayatri, was a pioneer in animation techniques in the visual communication stream, his ingenuity and innate understanding of animation making up for the lack of proper facilities. Work in the emerging and then in its infancy, computer graphics industry, his animation sense once morehelped in overcoming many software/hardware related shortcomings in the business at large creating many memorable effects in advertising films.

His knowledge and experience were utilised by Discreet Logic (now Discreet) as a consultant as he provided many filmmakers in India with their first glimpses of computer graphics in films and also trained a generation of editors and effects artists in the artistic use of these high end softwares.

He is one of the country’s top effects directors, having supervised and executed many scores of ad films for top production houses as well as feature films like Ekalvya and Hey Ram which won the National Award for Best Special Effects in 1999.

His great passion for teaching and sharing his knowledge has brought him full circle to devote a part of his time as faculty in animation at IDC, IIT-Powai, Mumbai, where he now helps young talent look beyond softwares and into the heart of animated storytelling.