O' Faby is a 1993

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

-language film. It was Asia's first full-length live-action/animation hybrid feature film. Directed by Sreekumar Krishnan Nair. Lists of Malayalam films It stars

Nagesh Nageshwaran Rao (born Cheyur Krishnarao Nageshwaran; (27 September 1933 – 31 January 2009) was an Indian actor and comedian mostly remembered for his comic roles in Tamil films during the 1960s. Nagesh was born in Dharapuram. He acted in ov ...

Thilakan Palappurathu Keshavan Surendranatha Thilakan (15 July 1935 – 24 September 2012) was an Indian film and stage actor who appeared in over 200 Malayalam films. Thilakan was known for his elaborate method acting, realistic and spontaneous appeara ...

, Roque Tharakan,

Manoj K. Jayan Manoj Kadampoothramadam Jayan, also known as Manoj K. Jayan is an Indian actor who acts in Malayalam cinema, Malayalam films in addition to a few Tamil cinema, Tamil films. Manoj has won three Kerala State Film Award for Second Best Actor for h ...

and

Srividya Srividya (24 July 1953 – 19 October 2006), was an Indian actress best known for her work predominantly in Malayalam and Tamil films, along with few Telugu, Kannada and Hindi films. In a career spanning for 40 years, she had acted in more t ...

. The director of animation was Ram Mohan. Singers K. J. Yesudas, K. S. Chithra and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam sing songs with lyrics penned by

Bichu Thirumala Bhaskaran Sivasankaran Nair, popularly known as Bichu Thirumala (13 February 1942 – 26 November 2021), was an Indian lyricist and poet. He is known for creating the style of arranging beautiful words in Malayalam film songs. In Malayalam cinem ...

. The cinematography team included

Jayanan Vincent Jayanan Vincent is an Indian cinematographer. He is the son of cinematographer and director A. Vincent and elder brother to Ajayan Vincent. He is known for his work in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi films and he is a member of the Indi ...

Ramachandra Babu K. Ramachandra Babu (15 December 1947 – 21 December 2019) was an Indian cinematographer of over 125 films, out of which most are Malayalam films. He also worked for films in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Arabic and English languages. He served as ...

P. N. Sundaram and Venugopal Madathil.

Plot

''O' Faby'' tells the story of the friendship between the hero and the animated character, Faby. The producer's son Roque played the hero role. The hero experiences many troubles but is saved by Faby.

Cast

Shammi Thilakan Shammi Thilakan is an Indian actor and dubbing artist who works in Malayalam films. He is the son of veteran actor Thilakan. He has lent his voice for actors such as Napoleon in ''Devasuram'', Prem Nazir in ''Kadathanadan Ambadi'' and for Nas ...

(voice) & Mela Raghu (motion capture) as Faby *Roque Tharakan as Sandy (voiced by Sudheesh) *

as Muthu Swami *

as Commissioner Nair *

as Sophie * Devan as John * Nassar as S.I Sekher * Ilavarasi as Jeni *

as S.I Siby * Krishnankutty Nair as Slum man * N. L. Balakrishnan as Fernandez *

Philomina Philomina (1926 – 2 January 2006) was an Indian actress, who worked in the Malayalam cinema, Malayalam film industry. She acted in more than 750 films in her career. She played mostly character and comedy roles, besides that of mother and gra ...

as Mary * Ashokan * Subair as C.I Jayashankar *

Jagathy Sreekumar Sreekumar Achary (born 5 January 1951), better known by his stage name Jagathy Sreekumar or simply Jagathy, is an Indian actor, director and playback singer, who has appeared in over 1500 Malayalam films in a career spanning almost four deca ...

as Rappai *

Narendra Prasad Raghava Kurup Narendra Prasad (26 December 1946 3 November 2003) was an Indian actor, playwright, director, teacher and literary critic. He was born at Mavelikkara in the erstwhile Kingdom of Travancore. Appreciated for his body language a ...

as Saint * Raghavan as P.C Rajaram * Mamukkoya as Tea seller *

Sukumari Sukumari Amma (6 October 1940 – 26 March 2013) was an Indian actress best known for her works in Malayalam and Tamil films. In a career spanning more than five decades, She has appeared in more than 2500 films predominantly in Malayalam, T ...

as Slum Lady * Divya Unni as Child Artist * Sandra Thomas as Child Artist *Sachith Soju as Child Artist *Shajith as Kishore *Rafeeq as Christopher

Production

Development

K. Sreekuttan, son of veteran director M. Krishnan Nair decided to make a live-action animated film after watching ''

Who Framed Roger Rabbit ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' is a 1988 American fantasy comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. It is loosely based on the 1981 novel ''Who Censored Roger Rabbit?'' by Gary K. Wol ...

'' and wanted to attempt similar experiment in Malayalam. Simon Tharakan, an NRI who learned of a news article about a mechanical robot founded by Sreekuttan's friend VS Sabu travelled to India to meet the inventor and he decided to produce a film. VS Sabu and Tharakan decided to have Sreekuttan to handle the direction after observing his work on the sets of ''Sargam''. Sreekuttan expressed his interest to do a live-action animated film to which they agreed. Tharakan came up with a concept based on character Fagin from ''Oliver Twist''. Tharakan's son Roquey was chosen to portray the film's main protagonist.

Filming

To make actors react and emote to the animated character, Sreekuttan chosen Raghu of ''Mela'' to play human version of Faby and a costume was created to resemble the sketches of Faby and given to Raghu. After this, the scenes were shot again leaving spaces to be “filled in later” with the animated figures. For the post-production to include animation, makers met Ram Mohan, father of animation who scolded them for making a film without employing an animator for pre-production and for not story boarding the film however he then gave them drawings for the cartoon characters along with a template of expressions for each situation. Makers had problems in including the animated sequences to the footage so a basic Click 3 camera was bought and a halogen light was fixed onto it, "Each film from O’ Faby's reels was then fixed onto the Click 3 camera for the image to get magnified, making the tracing simpler". Around 50 artists too were hired full-time to sketch the cartoon characters into

cel A cel, short for '' celluloid'', is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid (consisting of cellulose nitrate and camphor) was used during the first half of the 20th cent ...

sheets which went on for more than a year. The film's budget was around 1.4. crores.

Soundtrack

Soundtrack was composed by Johnson and the lyrics by

. *O Faby - K. J. Yesudas *Rajapakshi - K. J. Yesudas *Dingara Dinga - S. P. Balasubrahmanyam *Thaaazhathum - K. S. Chithra

Release

Simon Tharakan who produced the film had distributed it all by himself. The film was released in August 1993 despite hype, the film failed at the box-office.

References

External links

* {{India Animation Industry 1993 films Indian animated films 1990s Malayalam-language films Indian films with live action and animation 1990s children's fantasy films Indian children's fantasy films 1993 animated films Films directed by Sreekumar Krishnan Nair