Pakistan is going to step into a traditional, yet rare way of animation, with an upcoming animated short film, ‘Under the Blaze’.

The story of the film is meant to create awareness on human rights (child labour) in Pakistan. The film is directed by 20-year-old illustrator and animator Awais Shaukat, who is an undergraduate student of fine arts at the National College of Arts, Lahore.

The film is being produced by Rafhan Shaukat through his Lahore-based animation studio, Awartsy Animations.

The original story is based on real-life events of hundreds and thousands of children working on brick kilns, written by Awais and his team after visiting many kilns and hearing different stories from different families.

“Whenever we went to a kiln, children were working there, but they always disappeared seeing us. Everybody was scared thinking we were from any government sector.”, he said. “I think animation is the only way in which you can put life into a story with a pencil that only a few people can see."

He also mentioned, “Pakistan has a rich and hard-working culture in the art, but animation is not one of them. While we are entering various digital fields, why are most artists not stepping into it in this modern era?”

The film will follow the traditional way of 2D animation from the 20th century, like classic animations by Walt Disney and DreamWorks. In this animation process, artists draw every frame by hand and paint every background scene one by one. As one second includes 24 frames per second, it is always a lot of work.

The film is in the pre-production stage and the team is working on the storyboard. Almost all of the conceptual design, including character designing, location designing, and the script has been completed.