Deepa and Anoop (2022) is an adorable comedy and Bollywood-inspired musical series celebrating Indian culture, featuring Deepa and her best friend, a colour-changing elephant named Anoop!
It's currently streaming on Netflix.
Clients: Netflix and Mattel, Inc.
Production Length: April 2020 to Sept. 2021
Age Range: Preschool (2-5yo)
My Role: Senior Designer
Contributions: From the early conceptual stages, I helped establish the visual style of the series. During production, I designed 35+ characters, providing full turnarounds, expression and poses sheets for each. I also designed the main location, props, special fx, and promotional materials. More details below.
Results:
⭐A 18-episode series with a total runtime of 450 minutes was shipped, to great success, achieving an 8.1 rating on IMDB.
⭐The show won Best Inclusivity and Best New Series at KidScreen Awards.
⭐Deepa and Anoop also marks the first time Mattel created a show based on completely original characters!
Character Designs
A snippet from the cast of 35+ characters. Although the show is Bollywood-inspired, we focused strongly on diversity, creating characters of different ages and ethnicities, plus many different species for animals.
Sketches of Miranda the Magician. I drew inspiration from the script and a recording of the voice actress.
Full turnaround and 3d mock-up. Size references, different states, skeletal structure, HEX codes are all documented to ensure smooth handoff to CG modelers, texture and lighting artists. Below: Miranda's final concept.
Character poses sheet, exploring their personalities and limitations of the physicality of the character.
Expression sheets of characters, for storyboard artists' use, as well as informing the technical limitations for the CG team.
Challenges of creating facial animations
One of our biggest challenges on the character design side, was ensuring the characters could emote well within the budget and technology we were working with. To make this work, we decided to go with a 2D/3D hybrid look. I created comprehensive 2D eye and mouth charts for each character to be superimposed and animated on the CG models.
Location Design
Based on a thumbnail sketch from my Art Director, I finished the design by adding other environmental elements, such as vegetation and the front pathway.
For the Mango Manor, our only directive was "Make it MANGO-coloured!" After the design and colours were approved, I explored the "Dusk" and "Night" versions.
Other Designs
Prop design
Design of the backgrounds and graphics for the Bollywood musical sequences.
Thanks for reading!
Reach me at hello.vcheung@gmail.com
