Jugal Hansraj appeared quite pensive at the music launch of his debut film as a director. But that's him. He chose to patiently sit at one place and watch the media frenzy around him.

Roadside Romeo took three years to make and Jugal acknowledges that if it was not for good friend Adi (Aditya Chopra), he would never have made this film.

Says Jugal, “It was Adi's idea to make a Hindi animation film because he wanted to produce it. He told me to give a few story ideas for it and he really liked this one (Roadside Romeo). However, this entire process to get the story and script ready took six months.”

Jugal also reveals that he has always “watched a lot of animation”. “I knew a lot about animation before itself because I used to buy ‘The Making’ of films like Nemo, Ratatouille, Jungle Book, Madagascar etc,” he says.

Explaining how he came up with the story idea on dogs, he says, “I was stuck at a signal when I saw dogs playing with a garbage bin and that is when I thought, ‘why not make a story out of them?’”

Jugal carefully chose the voice of each of his characters, keeping in mind their realistic characteristics. He says, “I thought of Saif (Ali Khan) when I thought of the voice of the character Romeo because Saif is cool, intelligent and flirtatious — exactly like Romeo. I thought of Kareena to give the voice-over for Laila because she comes across as a confident, charming girl whom everybody is after."

And about the villain in the animated film, Charlie Anna, voiced by Jaaved Jafferi, Jugal says, “I had seen Jaaved portray 12 different characters on Channel V. That was when I thought, he is such a versatile actor.”

Fortunately for him, nobody said no. Unlike conventional films, the dubbing happens backwards in an animated film, revealed Hansraj.

Adds the director, "Saif did a lot of masti in the dubbing studio but there were days when he would come for dubbing but would end up chatting with me. The kind of actor that Saif is, he would be back in the studio the very next day to complete his dubbing schedule."

And no, Saif and Kareena never came together to dub. “All the characters had to dub separately. So they came on separate days to dub for the movie,” Jugal says.