In the movie 'Lava Kusa - The Warrior Twins', there is a battle scene between Rama and Ravana, in which thousands of characters take part.

“The making of that scene, especially that of the animal army, was undoubtedly the most challenging part,” says Sasikumar Prabhakaran, animation director of the movie.

Given the fact that India doesn’t have a western precedent when it comes to animating mythology, this is certainly no easy feat. “Yes, we had no reference points except the Ramayana series aired on TV. About 450 technicians have been working non-stop for the last four years to make this film,” says Sasikumar.

Most of the work of the movie was done at the Rayudu Vision Media Ltd (RVML), an entertainment business house based in Hyderabad.

'Lava Kusa - The Warrior Twins' is also India’s first 70 mm animation film and has the reputation of being the costliest animation film ever made in the country, its budget coming to a whopping Rs 25 Crore. Directed by Dhavala Satyam, the film will be released in Hindi , Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam as well as English around June 25.

The movie tells the story of the celebrated twins Lava and Kusa - sons of Rama and Sita - right from their birth at sage Valmiki’s hermitage to their meeting with their father to the final revelation.

“No compromises have been made in the quality of animation, although it has been difficult to procure technicians of international standards in our country,” says Sasikumar. “The film was made in 2D because it suits Indian mythology better.”

2D actually means a lot more work, as each character has to be drawn on paper while in 3D, most of the work can be done on the computer. While a typical Hollywood animated movie will have a maximum of 900-1000 shots, 'Lava Kusa' has no less than 2500. The movie also has a lot of visual effects incorporated into the battle, action and song sequences.

“There are a number of animal characters in the movie who are shown as Lava and Kusa’s friends and they play important roles in the film,” says Sasikumar.

The five songs in the movie, most of which have a classical touch, have been composed by L Vaidyanathan, (composer of the famed 'Malgudi Days' melody and the silent movie 'Pusphpakvimanam') who unfortunately passed away before the movie could be completed.

KJ Yesudas, Chitra and Shankar Mahadevan have also sung for the movie while Vijay Yesudas has lent his voice to his father’s song in the Tamil version.

Sasikumar, who is a native of Palakkad, has two more animation projects coming up - 'Agent Sam', which has terrorism as theme and 'Pappu', both of which are in the pre-production stage.