Animation Swami

"Rocket Tarzan"

2009-02-18T14:08:00.000-08:00

This strange image appeared in an item on Hindi (Bollywood) films posters in "Screen" - a weekly newspaper devoted to news covering Indian commercial cinema and was a bit like finding the image from "Famous Monsters", which I mention in a previous posting.

When I was much younger, I distinctly remember accompanying my mum on a visit to a local grocers in Southall, West London - it was an Indian owned grocers catering to the then growing local immigrant community, mostly Asians from the Punjab, and West Indians, and was located in a parade of shops that was set in the shadow of the railway bridge - I think run by one Preetam Singh - it remains a vivid memory for a number of reasons - for one, the shop had a basement for storing dry goods like rice and chapatti flour, and these were hauled up by a block and tackle contraption in the ceiling of the ground floor shop when anyone needed them - quite "old world", it seemed to me, but fascinating to watch in progress.

The other reason was for a film poster which had been stuck on the inside of the shop window to face the street - it was of a rather ominous looking robot holding a girl in its arms, striding purposefully across a bleak planetscape - a clunky robot - and to this day, until I spotted the image in Screen, I had gradually convinced myself that the image had either been a dream or a misinterpretation of something else, filtered through my young, robot-obsessed brain, already fuzzy from asthma medication.

Seeing it again was like a shock - and at the time (probably because I was still in the infants), the title escaped me - and looking at it now its all the more fascinating as an image since it is advertising what is in effect an early "Bollywood" scifi film, but with a weird, almost "Ed Wood" style approach - no one else would think of fusing "Tarzan" & "Rockets" - and where did the robot figure ?? - it would be great to try and dig it out and find out...

Of course, in later years I saw the classic "Forbidden Planet", and its iconic poster art, which this is so clearly inspired by, and at one point I thought it might have been a poster for that film that I had seen and which left such a great impression on me - both posters evoke some mysterious other world so effectively, and both capture the essence of 50's scifi fantasy - robots and scantily clad girls, usually prone and ready to be rescued...

Roger Eberts Blog...

2009-01-03T05:31:00.000-08:00

This link appeared on Roger Eberts (of Siskel & Ebert...) blog this week, following his write-up of Nina Paleys' independant animated feature "Sita Sings the Blues" -nice to know it's still out there...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/having_wonderful_time_wish_you.html

Scroll down to a comment by “DV”…

By DV on December 30, 2008 2:24 AM

Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the screenplay for Beowulf, talks of his own experience in adapting the Ramayana to an animated screenplay in the interview below. I get the impression that Neil has real insight into the epic.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/exhibitions/ramayana/podcasts.html

Interestingly, he describes his own frustration that Sita is too passive in the original.

My comments hinged on comparisons with French director Jacques Demis's 60's musicals, "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort" and "Umbrellas of Cherbourg", which I'd just watched over the Xmas holiday - a perfect antidote to the grim weather / economic crisis news/return of "Celebrity Big Brother" and possibly as divergent and off topic as the link itself...

Choc Socky...

2008-11-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the bad joke on the title - I was looking forward to this film...I'd seen "Ong Bak" and was impressed by the sheer artistry of no-cgi stunts - yes there's wire work, but its only there as a safety precaution, apparently.

I was drawn to it's story after reading reviews, aside from wanting to see another in your face example of martial arts - this time it's a young girl seeking revenge and pay back for her sick mother, a one time gangsters moll, who is dying of leukaemia.

It's probably wrong to compare films - like most martial arts films, the story is usually the slimmest excuse for the real attraction, but here the films USP is that the lead character has "special needs" and is technically handicapped since birth - this could come across as crass and unsympathetic, but, having a handicapped child of my own, it had special resonance for me.

I was constantly reminded of the Hindi films "Koi Mil Gaya" and its sequel "Krrish" (both, incidentally, hugely popular all over S.E Asia) which had a similar theme behind them - but there after any similarity ends to make way for some truly bone crushing action sequences and a level of brutality (if you like) which almost saves itself by moving into a cartoon-like exaggeration.

It's interesting that all the violence is contextualised by the girls handicap and what might appear totally objectionable, is given a rationale - she even has a face-off with the villains epileptic son in a scene which borders on the comical - in a previous era this scene would have been excised on the grounds of taste, and it does make for uncomfortable viewing.

There is an eye-catching animation sequence in the film at a pivotal point - where the girls motivation is crystallised - & the stylisation of the graphics seems to suggest to the viewer the subjective view of someone mentally challenged, quite effectively.

In total I have to say that the film succeeded in moving me enough that I could almost forgive the level of violence - saved by occassional humour and some rather clever use of CGI which reminded me of the work of the Jeunot brothers ("Delicatessen") - and also the few curiously undynamic scenes which just looked like a girl fighting for her life - ie they seemed to lack the flair & balletic quality present in Ong Bak (also referenced in the film through a film the girl is watching on TV) - but this is all redeemed in a breathtaking climax fought on the sheer walls of a tenement block.

Going by the outtakes and end credits for this film, it seems as if commercial cinema really is a life and death issue in Thailand, at least for the stuntmen involved, and there are moments where you feel you are witnessing something very close to a "snuff movie", which is a worrying development - the level of brutality skims very close to being objectionable and I was left feeling both elated but also rather depressed by the picture of life being presented - so much so that it gave me nightmares afterwards.

The perfect antidote to restore my belief that life is not necessarily so unremittingly grim is the DVD of Jacques Remi's "Umbrellas of Cherbourg", which I bought at the same time - call me a sap, but I'm really not too keen on seeing too many films which feature violence and what seems like a careless disregard for human life, even if its James Bond - and no one can convince me that these films truly reflect modern life in any way, if anything, they seem to be a visualisation of the collective "ID" - a sublimation of anger and angst directed at no one in particular but suggesting a pent up hostility at some unspecified threat - whereas at least in "Chocolate", the girls disability becomes a focus for her behaviour, and that is its one saving grace.

Stuff...

2008-04-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

And to kick things off, if you've visited the site, you'll notice the "news" page (I wonder how this will look a year down the line..haha...), with the postings re the podcast with Neil Gaiman for the British Library and also the link to Ashok Bankers site, and the archived item on the BAA!...

The BL thing is part of the run-up to the exhibition which runs through the summer of 2008, on the Ramayana, which centres on some miniature paintings of the epic, but will also feature: films, live theatre and other amazing stuff - I helped them acquire a copy of the original 2.5 hour version of the Indo-Japanese Ramayana animated feature which was premiered at the Cardiff International Animation Festival in 1994.

De-Fanged...

2008-04-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

O.K...now that I've included a link to this blog on my new and improved website www.raviswami.com - I've decided the current blog needs pruning - so I've ripped out all the potentially offensive rantings of the past year or so - you never know who is actually going to follow the link, do you ?...

About time...

2008-03-05T13:51:00.000-08:00

Just finished a Tony the Tiger ad for Th1ng - I art-directed it and designed the BGs with some help from Kimon Christodoulides, who created the 3D bits - animation and direction : Andy Powell, supported by a 5 or 6 strong team.

Apparently this is the last Frosties ad' we are going to see in the U.K that features Tony in this way, due to clamp downs on advertising sugary cereals to kids, the current ad plays out post 8 p.m, which is strange.

The BGs are a mass of photocollage, but were intended to be fully 3D at one point, but in a stylized way, the brief being a sort of hyper real environment for Tony to be in, and an epic feel.

I guess Tony finally gets to be in an ad' set in his natural home at least, which is funny.

I think I approached the BGs (based on layouts from the 2D animators) as photocollage more out of necessity due to the time constraints, but since the job was partly won with a 3D test I did which involved the same technique applied to a 3D move (which Kimon replicated) - it seemed to be the best way to approach the BGs and saved a huge amount of time, the alternative would have involved re-creating detail in a paint program or using traditional methods - the final results sit somewhere between matte paintings and illustrations and are interesting for that reason.

Since the original idea was to have created 3D BGs this approach lent itself to creating realistic texture maps, or maps based on real world reference, to give a more photoreal quality, but changed along the way to retain a kind of surreal quality - they (as in the director & agency) were after an epic but ethereal quality, like old film, with saturated colours and a painterly quality - a bit like 70's Hong Kong Kung Fu films or maybe old post cards.

Footnote : I was a judge (Craft category) at the up coming British Animation Awards (BAA!)2008, this year - which is on the 13th March, second time around since the last one in 2006.

Brendan McCarthy

2007-06-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of meeting comic strip artist par excellence, Brendan McCarthy, last week - proof positive that the internet is great for making contact, although one can never be entirely certain of the outcome.

In my introductory email to him, via his website www.swiminipurpose.com I mentioned a shared professional history, which intrigued him enough to stay in touch and agree to meet up when he had got back from L.A - which we did, in Soho, over a coffee.

Brendan showed me various projects he is hoping to develop into films or TV series having spent a large part of his career developing things for other people, here and in the U.S.

I remembered his breakthrough comic "Rogan Gosh", from the early 90s, which anticipated the current boom in Indian comics (Virgin etc) by a good few years, and inspired my own "Asian SciFi" character in the form of a short film script.

The meeting ended with Brendan giving me a signed copy of his book Swimini Purpose - very rare and up for grabs on Ebay he tells me and some pitch materials for Rogan Gosh, which he would like to develop as a film.

Aside from a professional interest, Brendan grew up in Hanwell , West London and was a close friend of Brett Ewins, another noted comic strip artist, who was a year above me at secondary school in Hanwell - Drayton Manor Grammar School - according to his blog on the history of Rogan Gosh, the character was dreamed by him and Peter Milligan in an Indian restaurant - I imagined after a visit to my hometown of Southall, just down the road from Hanwell & the centre of West London's Asian community - but in fact it was in a curry house in Soho - very likely the good old Maharani in Brewer St...

More cans of Crazy Foam...

2007-03-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

...here are some more...I had the parrot shaped one, incidentally - probably the least interesting of the lot, which added to my disappointment when I realised I'd just p*ssed away my pocket money allowance for another weekend....

Crazy Foam...

2007-03-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

People of a certain age will remember this utterly pointless waste of pocket money from the 60's - I have to own up to buying one can of this precursor to shaving foam (when that was an exotic novelty) after being suckered by the outrageous claims made by the advertising - was I gullible...?...yes

Gullibility is one thing which varies with age and intelligence - my sisters could see right through the claims made by the ads - eg "Build a ship in your bath with CRAZY FOAM!!!" - yeah right...with 10 cans of the stuff...

It stuck me that it's ironic that I work in the very industry, advertising, I am attacking - an industry rife with con artists, sheisters & bamboozlers...perhaps Crazy Foam sums up perfectly the world of those almost criminally committed to a make-believe fantasy world where it's possible to make things out of something as transient & insubstantial as foam - films or filmy.

I haven't really changed very much...which worries me....films are after all , a case of making people believe in something transient, sometimes with the barest connection to reality - and the effort which goes into them is akin to the sheer sense of purpose which resulted in a product like Crazy Foam....

Is that what separates the true "artist" from someone who just re-cycles, reactively, the same old stuff ? - or is it just maturity enough to see through the shallow claims of merchants peddling their wares...and use their artistry to hint at greater truths...??

Memory...

2007-01-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

I dug up this cover from a magazine called "Famous Monsters of Filmland" after an internet search, prompted by a conversation with my daughter about this very issue, dated 1965.

My recollection is of seeing a copy at the sweet shop next to my old primary school and being both fascinated and repelled by the cover, so much so that I eventually summoned up the courage (& pocketmoney) to buy it.

After flipping through the pages with sweaty hands I became convinced that the monsters inside were real and existed in a dungeon somewhere under Hollywood, only released for the odd film, like freaks in freak show. The magazine ended up on the top of the wardrobe in my bedroom, face down, and if I felt brave enough I'd venture up with the help of a chair and look at it.

Sometime later it was thrown away by my mother in one of her cleaning-up blitzes and lost to time & my memory, along with other gems like a first edition 3D "Batman" comic complete with 3D glasses.

The other realisation was that I must have been all of 8 years old at the time I bought it - the same age as my son is now, and I would never imagine that he would buy it, let alone any other 8 year old - I don't think its effect on my imagination at that tender age has ever left me, really - so finding the cover image was really like discovering a long lost friend, if that is the right word.

It also made me realise ( or imagine...) that nowadays very little can be consigned to memory in this way due to the internet and ways of archiving stuff - in fact young people today may end up being incredibly lazy as far as relying on memory at all, and I think memory is vital for the development of the imagination - or perhaps things from the past will simply have less relevance or importance than they did...

Indian comics...

2006-08-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

Reading about Virgin Comics new venture reminded me of my early encounters with comics in India - most noteably on long Indian train journeys in the 60s and 70s...

You could (and still can) buy the comics from vendors on the platform of any of the stations we stopped at on cross country trips - back then, usually Harvey Comics like "Sad Sack" or "Casper", which I could also get at home in the UK and which provided a much needed jolt of homeliness in a strange, often alien seeming environment.

I remember the evocative odour of newsprint and the dazzle of the yellowing paper, much baked by the Indian sun, I imagined - the comics themselves, aside from the Harveys mentioned above included a long lost first edition (obviously a re-print...) of Will Eisners "Spirit" - the femme fatale was called "Plaster of Paris"...how weird is that ?? - the ever popular "Phantom" and "Mandrake", Archie, Mad Comic, and locally produced comics like the Amar Chitra Katha series and the odd home grown superhero.

The US re-prints seemed to be in slightly mis-registered 2 colour printing ("Mandrake" sticks in my mind for this reason), with locally produced covers with often unintentionally funny characterisations based on the original US versions.

DC Comics seemed to be few and far between, probably, I suspect, because such a big publisher had not agreed on distribution rights, so if you saw them at all they seemed like gold dust.

Alongwith the odd "Gold Key" edition, such as the brilliant "Magnus, Robot Fighter", all these contributed to my sense of being somewhere familiar, if only in my own head, while the train rattled on through the Ghats and sun beat down through the glassless carriages & I dreamt of owning a Batman outfit....

“Hit the “Retro” button !!!…”

2006-05-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

Negadon – Monster from Mars

Dir Jun Awazu’s film is being promoted by its US distributor - Central Park Media (www.centralparkmedia.com), as the first completely CGI “Kaiju Eiga” film – and it was this fact that caught my attention along with a visit to the official site (www.negadonattacks.com) and viewing of some tantalising stills and a very small trailer clip.

Designed to look like the films from the Golden Age of Godzilla monster movies, the film has also made use of bespoke software to achieve the required retro look of an old film, reminding you of recent similar ventures into this territory, most notably, “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” – but on viewing of the whole film, supplied by CPM on a screener disc, it becomes apparent that Awazu has gone further than simply a transliteration of the classic “man in a rubber suit” film in another medium – CGI, and produced a film which is actually an elaboration of the source material and to some extent takes it a stage further.

I have a confession to make here – while I’m a fan of Godzilla films and Kaiju Eiga in general, I’ve never really been able to watch one through without getting bored, or worse, falling asleep, despite some choice US overdubs like “Double crossing Alien Fink!” – the reason being that they tend to suffer from turgid parallel story-lines involving the non-latex characters – with long pauses between the sections true fans want to see, the titanic punch ups between the monsters.

It’s possible that Awazu sees Negadon as a trailer for a much longer film, but I doubt it and I’d suggest that the reason it works so well is that it has been made with a great deal of economy, which is lacking in the original films. The pace and momentum of the narrative cuts out all the pre-amble in a way which seems to derive as much from film making techniques found in Anime as it does from static Manga.

There are a few shots in the film which illustrate this economy well, like a shot of the mars exploration ship which looks like static painted artwork, or slow drifts of the camera on a character, which might be a still.

The other notable aspect of the film is that Awazu has opted to take the potentially booby trapped route of not using real actors for the human characters, but CGI – however, again these shots succeed due to the economy of means and we see close-ups of a characters mouth or details of the face just long enough to convince, and anyway, just how much does someone actually move when speaking? – Answer, not very much – there is a tendency to exaggerate when animating realistic CGI characters and Awazu has managed to avoid the usual pitfalls by careful montage and design of shots.

Overall, the success of the film is due to the fact that it’s like a typical Kaiju Eiga film where all the boring bits have been edited out – the film certainly delivers when it comes to the climax which is everything you might expect.

On a technical level, the film throws open the debate about what an independent with a small team can achieve outside of the support of the studio / distribution system – in this respect it is similar to “Sky Captain” – but then having seen what, for example, a single student with one computer can do, I’m convinced that certain types of film or story are no longer limited to the capabilities of just large well financed studios.

In fact there is a rather tongue in cheek reference to this in the story line, as the chief protagonist is basically a lone scientist who just happens to build a giant robot in his (large) garage which he then uses to clobber the films titular bio-mechanical menace.

It’s obvious from certain scenes how much care and attention has been lavished on the film in terms of capturing the flavour of those early films, and it’s remarkable how the hardware sequences have that unmistakable “tabletop” look – where the film makers have gone further has been to avoid the limitations of wire work, for example, and use the freedom of CGI to actually improve on certain iconic moments, eg the monster being attacked by fighter planes.

It’s debatable that those early films succeeded due to their clunky charm – they work because we, as viewers, make them work – would CGI, being hyper realistic, actually detract from this charm factor? – well, no, I was pleasantly surprised that these sequences work very well, when viewed in the context of everything that has been seen since, from visual effects in films, to video games – this again is an example of how Awazu has managed to actually improve on the original.

“Sky Captain” worked on the basis of the film maker asking a question: “What if..?”, as in what if Frank Capra had wanted to make a sci-fi film, and had access to the technology at film makers disposal today. Negadon appears to suggest a similar question but answers it by saying that they might have done things differently if they had the chance, fusing a very contemporary storytelling style influenced in part by Manga and Anime, but dressing it up in a very evocative retro ambience which is a nod in the direction of the rare qualities of those Golden Age films.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in how Godzilla films and Kaiju Eiga in general have become part of American popular culture is William TsuTsui’s absorbing and comprehensive book: “Godzilla on My Mind” (pub: Palgrave Macmillan)

Watch out for this article at : www.fpsmagazine.com

Ravi Swami 2006
www.raviswami.com

Instructions...

2006-02-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

Don't you just hate them ?...I got a new printer today (I have 2 "ex-printers" to dispose of..) - a Canon "Pixma", so that I can print on DVDs, great...but setting up these things is always such a pain, almost as bad as having to dispose of all the detritus that comes with them - what happened to the joys of figuring things out, instead of wading through multi-lingual leaflets and lots of mini-bags and wire-ties?

The mindset that this engenders is one of "where's the instructions" and soon after "sod the instructions" and can permeate into every aspect of life in an annoying way.....

I saw a doc' last night on the Moon Landings and how Nasa instructed the astronauts to leave behind all their junk, like ziplock bags, since they were dead weight - how nice...good thing they did'nt bring a printer along with them...

Some more..

2005-11-29T11:52:00.000-08:00

Here are some more recent renders (today...) where the model has been set up for rigging and connections between the joints have been modelled...

X-Box..

2005-11-29T02:47:00.000-08:00

For all you out there who like robots (& who does'nt...?), here are some renders of a robotic crab character which I've just built (in Lightwave 8.2, but destined for Maya), based on some very minimal sketches from the agency creative and a proxy model from the director.

Spirited Away etc...

2005-11-11T04:52:00.000-08:00

I'm at home today and facing a long weekend, having just finished work on the Xmas TV ad' for the Birmingham Bullring - which is looking pretty good...and er...Christmasy..

This enforced idleness reminds me that I'd intended to review Miyazaki's Spirited Away since watching it last weekend, so here goes...

Much has been said about Miyazakis' inventiveness in terms of the visual style and design of his films, but from where I'm sitting, it's the stories which mark his work out, and like anyone who builds up a canon of work, you can see the underlying themes which tend to recur from film to film.

In this case, it's mans relationship to nature, and reflections on progress and industrialisation, which I suspect are at the base of most Japanese peoples concerns about the future.

I don't think this is why his films are successful outside of Japan though, and it's also interesting that Disney have picked up his films, which is no coincidence considering the fact that some of Disneys classic films reflect a similar outlook, although where Disney is concerned this had more to do with the idea of vanishing ideals and a way of life, aswell as a nostalgia for a pre-industrialised America.

It's also interesting that Miyazakis central characters are almost always young girls - this has less to do with any kind of Japanese quirk or marketing reasons, but more to do with the notion that a young girl represents a kind of innocence and open-ness to the more subtle forces at play in nature - and because Miyazaki's films seem to be loaded with these kind of metaphors, I think it is doubly interesting that they are popular in the West - where the Disney tradition seems to focus heavily (heavy handedly?) on the obvious and superficial - eg love, loyalty and so on, at the expense of any deeper analysis or position.

Looking at his previous films you can see the thread which runs through all of them -which includes Howls Moving Castle (not his story), where the castle represents a type of technology which has a mind of its own (but here the technology is semi-magical) and its occupant is a mysterious male magician.

In Spirited Away, the Theme Park is an obvious reference to the temporal nature of man's inventions, seen against the permanence of nature and how the balance can be upset by human meddling - magic becomes a metaphor for this type of meddling / technology - and can be more clearly discerned when you see the rather humbler dwelling of Yubaba the Witch's twin sisters house - located "in the woods" ie in the heart of nature, literally, set against the bath house which Yubaba runs, which is almost a machine served tirelessly by its enchanted workforce.

Miyazaki's angle is that nature ultimately is responsible for saving Chihiro, in the form of the river she fell into as a child, and the mysterious boy who befriends her who it turns out is the entrapped river spirit - and this transformation and realisation is what becomes a factor in Chihiro's growth as a person, when she and her parents are ultimatly released from Yubabas' enchantment.

I thought Spirited Away more successful than Mononoke, which I felt was overly long and a little heavy handed in its ecological message, I'm less impressed by technical flourishes, which Mononoke is full of, if it threatens to obscure the story, which is a common fault in a lot of Japanese animation.

Spirited Away features some stunning but subtle touches, and the animation is set at just the right level to tell the story effectively without trying too hard to impress, or try to be anything other than what we have come to expect of Japanese animation and what makes it different to say Disneys style of work.

You could counter the argument of the emphasis of gender in Spirited Away by saying that well, Yubaba is a woman, but here she is the archetypal Old Hag of popular mythology and as such, essentially genderless and almost a male - Miyazaki's introduction of her twin sister can be seen as being influenced by Eastern notions of duality that exist within women - eg as creator and destroyer combined.

And her giant baby ? - this could be just an amusing visual gag and while the thought flutters around that one might wonder at its monstrous progenitor, I think it has less to do with this than it does to represent Yubaba's wish to control everything in her realm, and in fact how impossible this is, since the baby becomes a metaphor for nature in the raw itself - and at the end of the film, she is forced to relinquish her control over it.

I can see why the film won an Oscar, compared to say, Belleville Rendezvous, which is equally good but in different ways - it certainly lacks the depth of Spirited Away, but makes up for this in its evocation of the 50's and limited use of dialogue, but its meaning and story itself are obscure and I think this is the intention - as if it's really about stumbling upon a lost culture and trying to decipher meanings out of symbols which are superficially familiar and whose meaning has been lost over time.

In Spirited Away, like the signs in the Theme Park, or even the discarded and crumbling shrines to nature spirits which mark the border between the real and the fantasy world which Chihiro enters which her parents, and which her mother casually dismisses as being shrines to nature spirits, the symbols are all around and clearly marked, but not in a way which is overly patronising.

The film succeeds in not being overly didactic - of course there are obvious VISUAL gags, eg the parents gorging themselves on free food in the Theme Park, and then becoming pigs, and where it's clear that Miyazaki is hinting that the park is a literal metaphor for a monument to greed, and where in the real world there is no such thing as a free lunch and Theme Parks are money making machine - perhaps even a microcosm of a narcissistic consumer society - but then this is the great thing about film or animation in particular - a picture is worth a thousand of those squiggly Kanji thingys....

The disc of extras is also interesting, with the production report and shots of Miyazaki cooking lunch for his crew etc - although I found the various trailer versions interminable - but interesting all the same.

Helps Stop Snoring...

2005-10-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting how the internet enables you to find things previously thought lost or consigned to history...here's a URL to an ad which I directed & designed a while back : http://www.koalatv.com/video03_W.html - it's nice to know it's still out there somewhere...

Some background might be in order - the design was based on some work I did on a proposed short film in collaboration with Gurinder Chadha (Bend it like Beckham & Bride & Prejudice) - we got as far as test animation & a commission from Channel 4 in the UK before they closed their animation dept and 9/11 happened - stylistically it's very similar but more importantly I used a technique developed for the Chadha project which involved combining 2D designs & extrapolating them in 3D, so you could light a scene and move the camera, but which retained the 2D feel of the original designs.

Here's a still from the Chadha project - entitled "Mr & Mrs Singh" and based on her parents - while "Stop Snoring" is quite stylised in terms of the characters, Mr & Mrs was more realistic.