Adi Shankar on The Guardians of Justice, Creativity, and the Deeply Personal Nature of His Projects
41As a producer, Adi Shankar has had a hand in countless popular projects. He served as executive producer on the Liam Neeson-led The Grey, as well as Dredd, Bodied, and Lone Survivor. As a creator and showrunner, he is just as capable. Now, he has teamed up with Netflix again to deliver his most personal project yet: The Guardians of Justice.
With Guardians of Justice, Shankar blends wildly different formats and visual styles to tell the story of a world on fire. The series follows the superhero team Guardians of Justice as they fight to save the world after a tragic event. He uses a seamless combination of 3D animation, claymation, traditional 2D artwork, and live-action to stretch the genre to its wildest, weirdest extremities, all while delivering a deeply resonant story inspired by his feelings and experiences.
Shankar endeared himself to many as showrunner and executive producer of Netflix's Castlevania, an acclaimed animated series based on the best-selling video games. Shankar also created Bootleg Universe, a series of fan-made shorts that take beloved properties and flip them on their heads. One of the most recent Bootleg Universe shorts functioned as a bleak epilogue to the Pokemon series, while others, such as Venom: Truth in Journalism, took popular comic book characters and subjected them to the curiosity of documentary crews.
Shankar only takes on projects that scratch a creative itch, but that's the only resemblance Guardians of Justice bears to his previous efforts. In almost every other respect, it's a vastly different beast. Coming up for Shankar is a Devil May Cry anime, as well as an Assassin's Creed anime and a slew of other exciting series.
Shankar spoke with Collider about what makes Guardians of Justice special and how he used his experiences to inform the storytelling. During our interview, Shankar commented, “On the surface, it's a deconstruction of superheroes told in a mixed media format. In any given scene or sequence, you'll oscillate between live-action, 2D animation, 3D animation, claymation, and stop-motion."
Here's a complete rundown of what we discussed during the interview which you can watch in the player above:
-What The Guardians of Justice is about
-The important role claymation played in blending visual styles
-How Adi's personal experiences influenced important character arcs
-How he chooses his creative avenues
-How he has grown as a storyteller
-The fluidity of sociopolitical discourse
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