Paintings to animate films soon

PUNE: What if your favourite paintings, such as the Mona Lisa or The Last Supper, came alive and their subjects started talking to you via animated feature films? Or what if your favourite comic book characters Tintin, Calvin and Hobbes or Dilbert jumped out of print and into a world of animation? Auryn Inc, a US-based animation studio, is set to do just that. The studio is planning to convert the works of world-renowned painters such as Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Degas and Monet into animated feature films.

The company is also looking at the global $10-billion children’s book market, which can be converted into animated films. Auryn is also exploring India for production as well as marketing of films and will soon develop local content. The company is starting its production pipeline in India. Pune-based artist Milind Mullick has been hired as the art director for an Auryn film The girl who cried foul.

The Pune office of Auryn currently has 30 people, and the number will go up to 80 by next year. “For animation, currently the only options available are two and three-dimensional graphics. We have gone a step further and created a platform for all artists and writers of children’s books to get their work online. So we have been able to make films of crayon, oil colours, pastel colours and water colour paintings. Writers of children’s books such as Jane Yolen, Lisbeth Zwerger, Laurence Anholt and Tony Hilerman are working with us to get their books animated.

We are also planning to get paintings of artists such as Degas, Matisse, Cezanne, Modigliani apart from Picasso, Da Vinci and Monet into animated feature films. We will complete our series of films on artists over the next two to three years,” said Auryn Inc CCO Umesh Shukla.

“Today’s young generation has been able to adapt to the Internet very fast, thanks to the IT revolution. But children’s books have not been able to move online. This is a great opportunity for the writers of these books to see their works being converted into animation films,” said Amit Shah of Artiman Ventures, a venture capital firm, which has invested in Auryn Inc.