Jooba Concept Art

Here is where it always starts...from a sketch.
These are the most critical part, as its been my experience that people react most viscerally to a sketch.Either your character has appeal or it doesnt...showing the sketches around at this stage establishes the whole feel and characters of the world.

I do fast b/w sketches and color them later in Photoshop, also the design of the characters does change from medium to medium, as the final Flash animated figures did come out slightly different.

Jooba!

Wow, 4 months of dev. time and finally I can talk/show what we have been working on.

Its ACK Media's first product in the pre-school age group and is about a bunch of kid's characters in a fantasy land where they have tons of adventures, explore basic learning concepts such as alphabets , numbers and shapes/colors.
We also introduce Kalia and Doob Doob, two popular characters from Tinkle as the MCs of the show as well as some live action dancers.
Its a very India themed show, as Samir Patil, the producer of the show has always stressed the demand in the market for such a show.

The entire show is a mixed format 22 minute episode that can work as a TV serial or 11 minute episodes.I conceptualized the world, designed the characters and with the help of a very talented team in Bangalore and Mumbai ,directed the 4 DVDs that we are releasing in September.
It was an exhausting effort as we had to do design and production in 3 different formats, to wit Live Action, Puppetry and Animation.
We ended doing all the post-production ourselves as well and have learnt a lot from this experience, with a number of team members learning entirely new skill sets to push the bar.So enough with the blabber, here's the work, starting with the concept stills...