''O' Faby'' is a 1993 Indian

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...

-language film. It was Asia's first full-length live action/animation hybrid feature film. It is directed by Sreekumar Krishnan Nair and stars

Nagesh Nagesh (born Cheyur Krishnarao Nageshwaran; (27 September 1933 – 31 January 2009) was an Indian actor, mostly remembered for his roles as a comedian in Tamil films during the 1960s. Nagesh was born in Dharapuram. He acted in over 1,000 film ...

Thilakan Palappurathu Kesavan 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 appearan ...

, Roque Tharakan, Manoj K. Jayan and

Srividya Srividya (24 July 1953 – 19 October 2006), also known as Sreevidya, 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, ...

. The director of animation was

Ram Mohan Ram Mohan (26 August 1931 – 11 October 2019) was an Indian animator, title designer and design educator, who was also known as father of Indian Animation and was a veteran in the Indian animation industry, who started his career at the Cartoo ...

, known as the father of Indian animation. Famous singers

KJ Yesudas Kattassery Joseph Yesudas (born 10 January 1940) is an Indian playback singer and musician who sings Indian classical, devotional and film songs. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of Indian Music and also as a c ...

, KS Chithra and SP Balasubrahmanyam sing songs with lyrics penned by

Bichu Thirumala B. 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 cinema, Bich ...

. The

cinematography Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens to focu ...

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 Ind ...

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 language, Tamil, Telugu language, Telugu, Hindi, Arabic and Eng ...

and

Venugopal Madathil Venugopal or Venu Gopal is one of the names of Krishna, based on Gopal (Krishna), Gopāla (literally "cow protector") as bearer of the flute Venu. * Dr. S Venugopal, Director - Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), DRDO. * Busa Venugopal is ...

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 is active in Malayalam films. He is the son of veteran actor Thilakan. He lent his voice for Napoleon in ''Devasuram'', Prem Nazir in ''Kadathanadan Ambadi'' and for Nassar in ''Ghaza ...

as Faby (voice cast for an animation character) *Roque Tharakan as Sandy (voiced by

Sudheesh Sudheesh (born 7 December 1972) is an Indian actor and director from Calicut who predominantly works in Malayalam film industry. He won Kerala State Film Awards for Best Character Actor in 2021. Personal life Sudheesh is the only son of T. S ...

) *

as Muthu Swami *

as Commissioner Nair *

as Sophie * Devan as John *

Nassar Nassar ( ar, نصار, lit=helper, protector, supporter, victory-maker), is a given name and surname, commonly found in the Arabic language. Alternative spellings of this name, possibly due to transliteration include Naser, Nasser, Nasir, Naseer ...

as SI Sekher *

Ilavarasi Ilavarasi is an Indian actress. She has appeared in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam Kannada and Hindi cinema. She was one of the prominent lead actresses from 1982 to 1992. Her popular lead roles are '' vatsalyam'' along with Mammootty and Visu' s ' ...

as Jeni * Manoj K. Jayan as SI Siby *

Krishnankutty Nair Krishnankutty Nair was an Indian actor who worked in Malayalam cinema. He was from Pippinmoodu, near Sasthamangalam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Nair worked with various theatre groups before becoming a film actor. Known for his natural acti ...

as Slum man * NL Balakrishnan as Fernandez *

Philomina Philomina (1926 – 2 January 2006) was an Indian actress, who worked in the 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 grandmother. She star ...

as Mary *

Subair Subair (25 May 1962 – 18 August 2010) was an Indian actor in Malayalam cinema industry. He was part of Malayalam films for nearly two decades and acted in around 200 films. Personal life Subair was born in the village of Chokli, Thalasserry ...

as CI Jayashankar *

Jagathy Sreekumar Sreekumar P. K. (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 decad ...

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 and ...

as Saint * Raghavan as PC Rajaram *

Mamukkoya Mamukkoya (born 5 July 1946) is an Indian actor known for his work in Malayalam cinema, and has also appeared in French film ''Flammens of Paradise''. He has mostly appeared in comedic roles. His unique usage of the Mappila dialect and style ma ...

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, Tam ...

as Slum Lady *

Divya Unni Divyaa Unni is an Indian actress and classical dancer who teaches various forms of dance such as Bharathanatyam, Kuchipudi and Mohiniyattom. Early life Divyaa Unni was born to Ponnethmadhatil Unnikrishnan and Kizhkemadhatil Uma Devi at Kochi, K ...

as Child Artist *

Sandra Thomas Sandra Thomas is an Indian film producer and actress. She is best known for her roles in ''Amen (2013 film), Amen'' and ''Zachariayude Garbhinikal'', also as the producer of ''Zachariayude Garbhinikal'' and ''Philips and the Monkey Pen''. Sandr ...

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 live-action/animated comedy mystery film directed by Robert Zemeckis, produced by Frank Marshall and Robert Watts, and loosely adapted by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman from Gary K. Wolf's 1 ...

'' 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 Sabu travelled to India to meet the inventor and he decided to produce a film. 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 century, bu ...

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

Soundtrack

Soundtrack was composed by Johnson. *O Faby - K. J. Yesudas *Rajapakshi - K. J. Yesudas *Dingara Dinga -

S. P. Balasubrahmanyam Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam (4 June 1946 – 25 September 2020), also referred to as SPB or SP Balu or Balu, was an Indian playback singer, television presenter, actor, music composer, dubbing artist, and film producer. He is wi ...

*Thaaazhathum -

K. S. Chithra Krishnan Nair Shantakumari Chithra (born 27 July 1963), always credited as K. S. Chithra or Chithra, is an Indian playback singer and Carnatic musician. In a career spanning over four decades, she has recorded over 25,000 songs in various In ...

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