Sunakanandam (A Dog’s Happiness): Experimenting with Hand-drawn Animation in Cinematic Virtual Reality

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-603-1_8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

cinematic virtual reality; hand-drawn animation; music video; reflective documentation research; immersive storytelling

Abstract

This research uses reflective documentation [1] to experiment with hand-drawn animation in Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) [2] to understand the convergence of the classical technique in emerging media. Sunakanandam (A Dog’s Happiness) [9], a Telugu song was selected for translation into a hand-drawn animated music video in CVR. The CVR experience, Duet [3] was a novel innovation in hand-drawn animation that represented a boy and a girl’s journey to adulthood, giving the navigator [7] the freedom to follow any character. However, for aesthetic and contextual reasons, the project focuses more on the characters, and the backgrounds are suggestive sketches that morph into different scenes. One of the advantages of the VR format is the spatial immersion [10]. The project Sunakanandam seamlessly depicts two worlds in 360-degree space: a gated society in contrast to a street. In the story, a street dog aspires to enter the gated community for a better life. While juxtapositions through split-screen have been commonly explored in conventional cinema, the scope of 360-degree space as a split-screen lacks representation [4]. The findings reflect upon considerations towards staging, key-framing, in-between animation, camera angles and transitions for hand-drawn 360-degree spatial storytelling. This research encourages hand-drawn artistic approaches to emerging technologies.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Maharshi Gautam Peesapati
AU  - Delwyn Jude Remedios
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - Sunakanandam (A Dog’s Happiness): Experimenting with Hand-drawn Animation in Cinematic Virtual Reality
BT  - Proceedings of the International Moving Image Cultures Conference (IMOVICCON 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 99
EP  - 109
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-603-1_8
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-603-1_8
ID  - Peesapati2026
ER  -