Carnatic song gets peppy digital makeover with animated game video

 “This type of animation has gone viral in the past for syncing the song to Beethoven music and now for the first time for a Carnatic song. The whole video is an animation done using an old game called Line Rider. It is a classic sandbox game where you draw a track for the sledder to ride on. The idea is to synchronise the way the rider travels with the song as well. This is the first time, Carnatic music is integrating with the line rider game. Since we wanted vintage music, we picked an excerpt from the 1964 performance of ‘Dharini Thelusu Konti’ sung by Sri GN Balasubramaniam. It is one of his famous songs that everyone knows,” says Mahesh Venkateswaran, founder of MadRasana. This outfit presents classical artform in an intimate setting to bring the artists and the audience close to each other to have a better connection.

 He adds that it is hard to come up with synchronisation between the line rider and the actual song. “In the video, the sledder jumps at every swara possible and only a few people can do it. A few years ago, I got in touch with a US-based animation artist Ben Harvey to do a video for Carnatic song. But that time, he couldn’t collaborate with us. Recently, he contacted me and I thought this is the best time to do something unique. The animation video is done by Ben Harvey. I wanted to add illustrations to the video so that we can depict what the song means. For this, we approached a Chennai-based artist Anirudh Srinivasan. Undoubtedly, he has done a brilliant illustration of the video. We took close to three months to get this done. The video was made as a way to thank all the followers of MadRasana YouTube channel for reaching 25,000 subscribers,” he explains.