Mumbai: Actor Jugal Hansraj who takes his bow as director on silver screen with animation movie Roadside Romeo says that he is a self taught filmmaker and making an animation film requires lot of patience.

"I am an animation movie buff since childhood and studied the art of animation filmmaking by reading books on it. My close friend Aditya Chopra wanted to produce an animation film and asked me to suggest story ideas. He liked the story of dogs and told me work on a script. It took me six months to develop the script of Roadside Romeo and later another two and half years to make a film," Jugal told PTI after the music launch of the film last night.

He said he enjoyed the process of first writing a full bound script where he staged the scenes himself while writing it, taking it to an animation studio (Tata Elxsi) who then started pencil sketching the characters and later discussing the colouring with me.

The drawing and computer graphics took place at Tata Elxsi and story boarding was done at Yashraj studio. "I got complete creative freedom in writing and directing the film," he said.

The technical experience came from Walt Disney whose co-producing the film with Yashraj, Jugal said. "We have the talent but no experience in animation. Walt disney's expertise was fruitful in this respect," he added.

To a question on whether he was still eager to act, Jugal said he was open to good acting offers after his film s release. "I am enjoying direction as well," he said.

Jugal, a successful model and actor as a child could not carve a niche as a leading man. He was seen in Aaja Nachle last year starring Madhuri Dixit.