'Swaroop' cartoon may get picked as TV series

los angeles: atul rao's bovine bliss, the first indian american cartoon to feature an all-indian family centered around the character of swaroop sharma, aired for a second time in august in the cartoon network's cartoon weekend premiere contest. though it may not have gotten enough votes from the kids to have won the contest, the powers that be still think it's a winner.even before it aired the first time on television, "they said don't worry about the competition; it's a way of promoting your cartoon," rao said. "they said that there's executives (at the cartoon network) still very interested in having it picked up." from what rao has heard, the network will probably do more controlled focus testing to really see what kids think of it, and they'll use that data to help them decide, since "this blind voting you can't control in any way," he added. in bovine bliss, 10-year-old swaroop rescues a cow which his next door neighbor won in a poker game. but when he brings it home, his parents are adamant that he get rid of it, until the grandmother points out that it's govardhan puja day, when all cows are welcome in the home. sacred or not, the lovable cow soon outstays its welcome. swaroop then comes up with solution that appeals to all concerned. he and his brother disguise the cow as a wealthy older woman and book her passage on a cruise ship bound for india, where she will live out the rest of her days in comfort. cartoon network's primary audience is between the ages of eight to 14, "but 25 to 30 per cent of their audience is between the age of 19 to 26, so those are the two groups that you try to hit when you write," rao said. "ultimately, i think swaroop is very suitable for the whole family." the cartoon that won the contest was the kind that's "loud and in your face," rao said, whereas his was far more subtle. "it's character-driven, it's got a lot of heart, it's different, and i think the cartoon network liked it because of that." if the network executives do give him the green light, "and if they give the order for a hundred stories, we're ready. we've already got 30 to 35 stories," rao said. "i don't think (bovine bliss) was the funniest of all the stories. we've got even funnier stories in the bag." rao was camping in the wilds of canada during the competition and has no idea how many votes his cartoon received. "it would be interesting to know," he said, "but i don't take it as a real measure of what kind of show this is going to be, or whether the audience is going to like it or not." as far as he is concerned, "asking a kid to watch an hour-and-a --half of different cartoons and decide which one is going to be able to generate a hundred really funny stories, they can't tell you that. "when you consider that in america grownups can't decide between two presidential candidates, here they're asking a kid to decide between ten cartoons. i would have trouble deciding between ten cartoons, and i've been in the business 15 years." like a handful of other directors, rao spent the better part of his childhood making films. his first production, made at the age of nine, was a parody of the little rascals, followed by a parody of star trek. he also tried his hand at animation, making a short film about outer space before graduating to stop motion animation with his de feet, a youthful endeavor which he described as "giant feet squishing people." though born in detroit, rao grew up in canada, graduating in 1986 from mcmaster university in his hometown of hanover with a degree in psychology, a compromise of sorts since "my father was a doctor, and i had an interest in art, so i was splitting the middle," he chuckled. after a brief stint working in a psychiatric hospital, rao was able to convince nelvana, one of the world's biggest animation companies, to take him on as an animator, with the result that for five years, he continually submitted story ideas, which no one would read. "but i was vigilant and persistent," he said. "i was relentless. i wouldn't take no for an answer. finally, they had no choice but to read them, and when they did, they liked them." nelvana let him write a couple scripts for care bears, a pre-schooler hit in the 1980s, and when they proved to be hits, they hired him to write for babar and tin-tin, and had him submit some beatlejuice outlines. eager to perform in front of a live audience, rao went on to join the puppet troupe canuppets, and within months was their head writer. at the same time, he was performing with a multi-cultural comedy troupe, doing a number of indian sketches, including his own one-man bollywood movie called raj kumar in battle fight. all that experience landed him a producer internship with owl television in 1992, where he met greg vanreil, another producer intern who became a long-time writing partner. two years later he was accepted into the prestigious canadian center for advanced film studies, where he says he learned more about the international marketplace as well as learning to hone his writing and producing skills. recruited by y-tv, the canadian version of nickelodeon, rao was given his own live show. "basically, there were no scripts. it was a total of 20 minutes that i would just speak to kids and crack jokes," he recounted. "it was the greatest job i ever had." at y-tv, he co-created another show with kim saltarski, who also became another long-time writing partner. together they wrote a script which placed among the top ten out of hundreds submitted for a contest hosted by the world animation celebration. toward the end of the animation boom in the late 90s, rao managed to land 11 development deals with practically every tv network on the lookout for children's programming. fox network later hired rao and his writing partners to be the executive producers of their interstitial programming, the shows between shows, on their family channel. meanwhile, animation director mike milo was developing a cartoon series around the idea of a multi-ethnic school. buried among the students was a minor character called swaroop, who caught the eye of linda simenskay, the vice-president of development at the cartoon network. simenskay, whom rao describes as "artist friendly," introduced him to milo and asked if the two of them could come up with a show based on the swaroop character. together they fleshed out a few ideas and came up with a show that rao then pitched to the executives. as he told them, "this would be a real indian show, not indian sidekicks, no indian caricatures, but indian characters with some dimension to them, but it would be really funny, it's respectful, and yet it would have cultural content." in spite of a small budget, rao insisted on using a sound track featuring live indian musicians who had to be paid union scale. "that was a hard one for everyone to swallow, but i think everyone is happy with what we came up with," he said. the seven-minute cartoon took two years to make, rao working hard to make sure the animators accurately captured the look and feel of an indian household, even at one point having milo wrapped in a sari to get him to understand how it should be drawn. in addition to being the writer and producer, rao also provided the voice for swaroop, "adopting his point of view, his feelings, and just playing a ten-year-old kid," he admitted. "in showing it to other kids, they found it believable." bovine bliss made its debut on the cartoon network on july 27 during its cartoon premiere weekend. other cartoons were premiering on the network that day, and was up against some really tough competition, "but the feedback that they received was good, people saying positive things about it," rao said. meanwhile, a canadian company has hired him to write a number of scripts for their hoze hounds cartoon, and he is already working on an outline for a bollywood parody, which he says will be an austin powers kind of comedy targeting both american and indian audiences. he's also received an offer from a canadian company to write a sitcom about indians in canada. "it'll be a little more hard hitting than swaroop, a little more issue oriented," rao contended. "but swaroop is one of those rare occasions in which something that i care about, something that comes from my soul, has actually seen the light of day."