You know something is red hot when cable stations pay homage to it in their I.D. spots. The latest example for this trend is a new I.D. spot for Cartoon Network India, which is a glorious homage to Bollywood.
Produced for the cabler by Hong Kong-based animation house Stvdio Media, the spot includes characters such as the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter, Johnny Bravo, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Batman, Marvin the Martian, and Tom and Jerry in large ensemble dance numbers, against the lush backdrop of old Bollywood movies from the 1960s and ’70s.
According to animation veteran Larry Feign, Stvdio Media’s founder and CEO, "The original 60-second station I.D. grew way out of proportion to where everyone stopped thinking of it as a station I.D., but as a mini-movie which extended beyond two minutes.” He says his team did as much exploratory artwork and test animation as they would have done for a short feature film. The spot, which exactly took one year to produce, uses traditional animation, photo-collage, hand-painting and digital imagery.
Stvdio Media, which recently launched its Los Angeles office to play a more active role in the North American market, has been involved in programming and commercial projects on behalf of clients such as Walt Disney TV Intl., Coca-Cola and Yahoo.
CEO Feign, is no stranger to the world of animation. His grandfather was the printer for Hanna-Barbera, and he was raised in a house packed with original cels from The Flintstones and Yogi Bear cartoons. After working at DIC in the 1980s, he moved to Hong Kong and created the popular comic strip The World of Lily Wong. “It’s great to see how it all has come full-circle,” notes Feign. “We’re certainly hoping that the Bollywood spot will run in the U.S. outlets as well.”
