Beyond the Sidelines: A conversation with Studio Sideline
While most of us wouldn’t think that a simple “kucch karte hai yaar” would translate into a wonderfully animated intro showreel, knitting the visual styles of Sailesh Gopalan, Derek Domnic Dsouza, Preetham Gunalan, and Vibhav Singh; this is where Studio Sideline begins.
In this feature we meet the brains behind Studio Sideline, the animation studio based in Bengaluru, who have worked on projects like Love, Death + Robots, ‘800’, Music Videos for Seedhe Maut, and many more.
The four-member team had been freelancing individually for a while when they felt that their growth was stagnant. Soon, they started looking for avenues that would challenge them to learn.
Background Art for Free Fire India’s 4nniversary music video - Sab Khiladi!
They says, “We figured it was time to take on larger projects with larger teams and discussed working together as a sort of “collective” that quickly transformed into an animation studio.”. Hence, Studio Sideline was born.
Formed with the aim to work alongside a versatile team of artists and animators to produce high quality animated and illustrated content that can be showcased globally, the teams’ debut was a “quasi-show reel” narrating four different stories in each of the members unique styles.
Stills from the showreel-turned-video that the team created together as Studio Sideline
They say,” We’re extremely particular about the work we put out and place our pride in our quality checks that strive to ensure that every product we display is of our best possible quality and that it not only garners the attention and interest of our Indian audience but is worthy of being appraised (and praised) at the global stage.”
We’ve come to terms with the fact that even our combined experiences are but a mere drop in the ocean of creativity that surrounds us, and that we need to look outward if we aim to produce a truly diverse range of content.
Studio Sideline creates an environment for collaborators that ensures maximum quality, often clarifying to contributors their scope of work and budget early on.
They believe being respectful does half the work when it comes to creating successful collaborations.
They believe being respectful does half the work when it comes to creating successful collaborations.
With this also comes careful planning and budgeting- not just with the team, but also with the client. Establishing timelines, workloads and expectations within the clients’ budgets is something that the team takes seriously.
They say, “We’re usually firm on our projected budgets and decline projects that can’t match it, but it would be fair to say that we’ve had to make the occasional concessions to just get a project and build our portfolio.”
Studio Sideline has also created the animated intro for the Tamil movie ‘800’ and have made animated music videos for popular Indian bands like Seedhe Maut and When Chai Met Toast.
The team utilizes their differences in style to stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies of their areas of interest, helping them expand their collective skillset.
The studio has evolved in many ways since its inception, notably in our own mindset of being just artists to also being business owners. The one thing that has remained unchanged is our ideology, an unwillingness to compromise on our morals for the sake of business.
Sideline is bigger than the four of us, and we hope to gradually build a platform that encourages diversity and collaborations of all kinds, while preserving the core intention of producing high quality animated work in India.
On that optimistic note, we conclude this feature with Studio Sideline. We thank Derek and the team for sharing their insights and wish them the very best for the future.
You can reach out to Sideline Studio on the links below:
Sailesh Gopalan, Derek Domnic Dsouza, Preetham Gunalan, and Vibhav Singh
