Prakash Dantuluri – CEO at Paradigm Creatives

Prakash Dantuluri, is the CEO at Paradigm Creatives which is based in Hyderabad. Prakash is a tech savvy and creative professional himself having been involved in many challenging projects ranging from movie making to developing mobile and tablet computer solutions. He started his career as a programming analyst.

CG Today : Mr. Prakash, thanks for accepting our request to talk to us and please accept our warm welcome.

Prakash : Thank you. It is my pleasure.

CG Today : You are the CEO of Paradigm Creatives, a technological venture dabbling in catering to the smart phone and tablet computer segment. What according to you is the potential held by smart phones and tablet computers? Are you foreseeing a complete transition in the way people work in the coming decade?

Prakash : Yes. We are looking at a fundamental shift in the way computing is done, communication happens, and content is produced and consumed. As a medium and as a platform it is interconnected, scalable, disruptive and essentially evolving.

It is quite adverse. It is also a great opportunity.

CG Today : You would like to call yourself the ‘Creative Technical Guy’. Your experience shows a collage of different and diverse accomplishments too. Do you think being tech savvy helps you express your creativity better?

Prakash : Definitely. It is believed that Buddha once said, ‘All events are interconnected’. In the same way, no skill set lives in isolation. There is always a bit of overlapping and most of the times it is actually complementary. We see this crossover in lots of complex projects. Understanding technology doesn’t just help, but it is essential to be able to express yourself effectively and to reach broader audiences.

The opposite is true too. Being creative helps in using technology more effectively.

CG Today : You have been able to launch a series of interactive stories for the Android and iOS platforms, Odyssey being the first one. What is the story behind your initiative in interactive entertainment and what are you trying to achieve through this?

Prakash : There actually is a story. Right after the release of my movie, I was working with an American F/X studio to work together on a Motion Comics series that is based on one of their properties. (Developed by an Oscar award winning director). Due to reasons that I cant disclose, that venture never took off.

Somewhere during that time I envisioned that a whole new medium is going to be created for the distribution and delivery of entertainment. Silver Screen was a good medium. TV was and still is. Computers are. But there was something new that was going to happen which will be pervasive, social, mobile and fundamentally interactive.

I discussed this with Sridhar (Chairman of Paradigm Group). Sridhar saw the vision and backed me completely. And as life would have it, this vision got validated in the form of the iPad within just a few months’ time.

CG Today : Odyssey, your series of interactive story apps for iPad, you are collaborating with Mark Zaslove, who has won a Daytime Emmy with “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”. How was it working with an Emmy winner and what did his presence add to Odyssey?

Prakash : It’s been a pleasure. Mark is a thorough professional. When we first presented this idea to Mark he loved it and agreed to do it despite his busy schedule. We brainstormed several stories and zeroed in on Odyssey, Around the World in 80 days, Robinhood and David and Goliath.

Mark wrote Odyssey. He struck an excellent balance between rooting it in the original by Homer and still narrating the story with a contemporary style that incorporated a scope for interactivity.

CG Today : The Odyssey team also includes Alexander Lindner, who is the matte painting artist for The Gruffalo, which has been nominated for Oscar 2011 and BAFTA film award for best short animation. What was the difference brought about in Odyssey, by such an acclaimed artist?

Prakash : The amount of research Alex is putting into this project is worth mentioning. There should be a right balance between ‘ancient times’ and ‘fantasy’ to tell this story. It is not a very easy job because Odyssey is filled with lots of ‘mini worlds’, variety of characters, environments and moods.

When Alex sent us the first storyboard, all Mark and I could say was, ‘Wow’.

When Alex started sending illustrations, I could see what he was seeing and it was beautiful. Illustrations with that kind of thought and research put into are time-consuming.

Alex works from Belgium, Mark from California and I am from Hyderabad. It was Alex’s visualization that brought us all together and onto one page.

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