Tenali Raman, soon in cartoon series

THIRUVANTHAPURAM: Move over Aladdin and Spiderman. Come

November, Indian viewers will get to watch the king of wit, Tenali Raman in an

animated series. Thanks to the efforts of Toonz Animation India, a leading

animation company based in Trivandrum, Kerala. 

‘The Adventures of Tenali Raman’ will be a 26-part series of 11-minute animated episodes. The series will have artists and creative brains from all over the world. It will even have some Americans to give some of the voice-overs. You can look forward to the stories, which have the court jester Tenali Raman trying to save the day for his king Krishna Deva Raya. There is also the scheming Rajguru and his crony Tingari.

As a prelude to the series, Toonz has also launched a comic book series on Tenali Raman. Toonz hopes to build a strong kids fan base in its run up to the series launch in November. In this direction, at the IT Kerala 2002 being held in Trivandrum, Toonz has subscriptions schemes for the comics running which make a kid enroll into their Toonz Kids Club. The club will conduct animation workshops and creativity lessons for kids all over India. As a start they will conduct a Kerala-wide comics contest soon.

Toonz is also working on an animated series on Hanuman, a Mowgli-like jungle boy called Tikko who walks the jungle with his monkey from Cambridge, Milton. Also, in the pipeline is a series on Tales from Panchatantra. With such projects coming up, Indian children can now very well look forward to animated Indian heroes.

Toonz has its parent company in California and marketing offices in Australia, and Japan. In Trivandrum, it has a 400-strong team. They also have a studio in Mumbai that works solely on animation for commercials.