No monkey business this

The animated school bag is one of the first homegrown non-mythological character to debut on television

Animation movies have yet to find their spot at the box-office in the country but Nina Elavia Jaipuria,Senior Vice President & General Manager,Nickelodeon India feels that Indian children are ready for its latest offering Keymon Ache,a local non-mythological character developed for the channel by Hyderabad-based DQ Entertainment (International) Limited,an animation,game art and entertainment company.

After the success of Little Krishna on our channel,we began looking for an Indian character that was not seen or heard and that was not based on Ganesh or Krishna because a fatigue had set in over mythological characters. Thats when we hit upon the concept of Keymon Ache, Jaipuria said. The story follows the life of ten-year old Rohan Tendulkar and his everyday life with best friend Rahul,his crush Mini,problems with Prof. Mishra and his grandmother. His life is dreary and dull until his travelling salesman father comes back from Japan and brings him a school-bag from one of his trips. The bag comes to life (Toy Story,anyone?),turning into Keymon (Its monkey spelled backwards, Jaipuria said) and helps Rohan become successful in all his endeavours (Koi… Mil Gaya,anyone?)

Jaipuria denied that the title had taken inspiration from Toy Story or Koi… Mil Gaya and explained the show. Keymons mission in life is to help and save Rohan,but whether he manages to do so remains to be seen. It has been conceptualised as a potboiler and has a lot of Bollywood influence. Keymon even says Main Preity Zinta hoon when asked Tum zinda ho? in one episode. All of this is to engage and entertain children, she said.

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Speaking on the technicalities of the show and the character,Tapaas Chakravarti,CEO of DQ Entertainment,said that his companys previous experience of working on shows like Tak And The Power Of Juju and Penguins Of Madagascar for Nick USA helped to understand the channels requirements perfectly. We took the brief from Nick India and worked on it for four months. We had several brainstorming sessions. The basic challenge was producing characters that could be taken worldwide, he said.

Chakravarti said that the characters and props came from the environment. Details of the environment that had to be created in animation were detailed in the script. How the monkey and Rohan and other characters should be animated came from that and quite a lot of research, he said.

The company created more than 400 characters for each character before selecting the one currently on air. These were discussed with Nick India and the scripting team before arriving on the final look. The animators had to ensure that the characters dont lose their individuality while delivering the comic punch lines. The characters layout had to blend in with their personality. For example,Keymon had to be believable as a prop when he is a school bag. He also had to look believable while he becomes real and solves problems.

The animation company also had to double-check their creations with other animated shows. This was done to prevent plagiarism issues with Chakrabarti saying it is a normal process. There were also references to DQ Entertainments previous works like Peter Pan,Hulk,Mickey Mouse Club House to help with the characterisation. The company is currently working to internationalise the content. If we remove the bindi from Rohans mothers forehead,she can be a mom in any other city because most of the story plays out in a suburban environment familiar to many people across the globe, Chakrabarti said. Apart from this,the dialogues are being rewritten in English for the Canadian audience who will sample the show soon.

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The company has picked up the world rights apart from India and South Asia. Merchandise with Keymon and Rohan are also in the pipeline and will be available soon. The show began airing from May 9 on Nickelodeon at 7 pm.