Pakistani First Hand Drawn Animation

Mano Animation Studio

When he was growing up in Pakistan, Usman Riaz loved watching Stubio Ghibli films. "They helped me see the beauty in the mundane, and the tragedy in the beautiful," he says. Riaz would constantly scribble his own drawings and dreamt of becoming an animator, one day making his own masterpieces like My Neighbour Totoro.

The only problem? "Pakistan has no hand drawn animation industry," he says. Now Riaz, a TED fellow, is starting his own. His company, Mano Animations, has just successfully Kickstarted its first picture, The Glassworker.

The film, a love story between an apprentice glassworker and a virtuoso violinist, he says, is "a comment on the affects of war on children". For the last year, Riaz has hand-drawn the film’s storyboards -- primarily using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil with the Paper app -- and composing the score. (In addition to animation, he’s an accomplished guitarist.)
Creating such an animation studio in Pakistan hasn’t been without its challenges -- but it’s also been liberating, he says. "The cool part about there being no industry is that there were no rules to follow," says Riaz. "We really could do whatever we wanted. I attended workshops and found cool people. It snowballed."

Glassworker

Pakistani animator Usman Riaz is too humble to compare himself to Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki, animation demigod, hero to cinematic greats like Pixar's John Lasseter and Guillermo del Toro, and peerless practitioner of hand animation. At 25, Riaz doesn't claim the genius that made Miyazaki a giant, but the film he's currently directing and composing, The Glassworker, now raising funds on Kickstarter, is about to rock the indsutry by becoming Pakistan's very first completely hand-animated feature film.

The Glassworker is about two young children, Vincent, a glass smith apprenticed to his father, and a girl named Alliz, a talented violinist who frequently visits his shop. Sound like a Miyazaki film yet? The story follows their relationship over the course of many years, touching on classic Ghiblian themes like the effects of conflict on children, innocence, and coming of age. In order to make the film, Riaz founded Mano Animation Studios, an amalgamation of animators, designers, and producers from Pakistan, Malaysia, the US, and the UK, to pull off the ambitious story. If their Kickstarter is successful, they will release the film in four parts, the first of which will be available in May 2017.