A Jaipur studio develops Boy King as a culturally rooted animated feature shaped by craft, memory, and responsibility.
Before Night Tiger Animation Studios began developing Boy King, its story started with a return home. Jayant Kumar spent much of his life outside India, building a career in animation and contributing to projects connected to Spider Man, F1: The Movie, Moon Knight, Aquaman, and 1917. After leaving India at age 12, he spent 10 years in the United States, where he graduated from high school in Chicago before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation from the Savannah College of Art and Design. There, he trained under former Disney and DreamWorks animators, developing the artistic and technical foundation that would shape his career. After graduating, Kumar worked for a year in Los Angeles with studios including JibJab Bros. Studios and Psyop before continuing his career across Montreal, Canada, Sydney, Australia, and finally London, United Kingdom. After spending 18 years abroad, he returned to India with a clear creative goal: to help build original Indian animation from a place of craft, discipline, and personal memory.
Founded in November 2025 in Jaipur, India, Night Tiger Animation Studios brings together three cofounders with different but connected strengths. Kumar brings a decade of animation experience, including work as a Senior Animator at Framestore London. Abhi Singh contributes more than ten years of visual effects experience. Medha Yadav leads operations and investor relations, supporting the studio’s creative direction with the structure needed to develop long form animated work.
The studio’s first major project is Boy King, a ninety minute animated feature set thousands of years ago in ancient India. The story follows a young prince who must learn what it means to lead, not only through strength, but through wisdom, restraint, and responsibility. Its world includes magic, monsters, curses, and ancient power, but the emotional center is more human. At its core, Boy King explores inheritance, duty, and the difficult process of growing into a role before one feels ready for it.
For Kumar, the story is closely tied to his own journey. His years abroad gave him technical experience and exposure to large scale productions across North America, Australia, and Europe, but his return to India gave the work a personal foundation. “I spent ten years making other people’s worlds feel real, Spider Man, F1, Moon Knight, 1917. The goal was to always come back home and tell my own stories,” he said. Kumar also shares creative updates and personal glimpses of his work through his Instagram page.
That personal connection helps define Night Tiger Animation Studios’ approach. The team is not presenting itself as a local version of an existing Western studio. Instead, it is focused on creating work that feels specific to its own roots. “We don’t want us to be anyone’s answer to anyone. The moment you’re ‘India’s version of’ something, you’ve already lost the plot. We just want to make something good,” Kumar said.
This perspective matters in an animation landscape where Indian stories are often grouped into narrow expectations, including children’s entertainment, devotional material, or short digital formats. Night Tiger Animation Studios is approaching Boy King as a cinematic animated feature with an Indian setting, emotional seriousness, and a visual identity shaped by texture and atmosphere.
The film’s visual style combines 3D, 2D, and practical effects techniques. The studio’s stated inspirations include Caravaggio’s use of light and shadow, Bernini’s sculptural treatment of surfaces, and Bouguereau’s approach to the human form. Rather than aiming for a glossy finish, the team wants the film to feel physical, ancient, and tactile. The goal is to create a world that appears built from material, memory, and mood.
“Every frame in Boy King has to earn its place next to what I saw daily working on those Hollywood projects,” Kumar said. “That’s the only bar we’re measuring ourselves against, not the West, not other Indian studios, just the work itself.”
The studio has released a proof of concept trailer for Boy King, offering an early look at the film’s tone, setting, and visual direction. The trailer introduces a world shaped by mythic scale and restraint while keeping the focus on the prince’s personal journey. Additional updates from the studio are available through the official Night Tiger Animation Studios YouTube channel.
Night Tiger Animation Studios has also begun sharing the project with industry audiences as it continues development. For an independent studio, that process is part of building awareness, finding collaborators, and showing how original Indian intellectual property can be developed with patience and technical care.
What makes Boy King notable is not only its scale, but the intent behind it. The project reflects a creator returning home with experience gained across the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, then applying that experience to a story rooted in Indian history, imagination, and family memory. It is not framed as an imitation of another market’s animation model. It is a personal and cultural project being built through the demands of a full length feature.
As Night Tiger Animation Studios continues developing Boy King, it offers audiences and collaborators a closer look at a studio working to expand how Indian animation can be seen. Those interested in the project can visit the studio’s official website, watch the Boy King proof of concept trailer, follow the team on Instagram, or contact the studio at te**@********er.in.
