ANIMATION - AN UPCOMING CAREER OPTION

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The film world is being overrun by cartoon characters —from Toy Story to A Bug’s Life to Shark Tales. Not content with children’s films, animation has firmly established itself in mainstream cinema, advertising, television and the gaming industry.

On one end of the spectrum are the fully animated features such as the blockbuster 7776 Incredibles or Shrek (1 & 2) Lion King, and Finding Nemo, while even regular films like Titanic, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings and Harry potter series extensively rely on digital photography and animation to bring alive breath-taking environment, monsters and fight sequences. And the there is Final Fantasy whose entire cast is computer generated giving birth to a new term - “synthespians” or digital actors!

The Indian animation industry is fast catching up - Pandavas-The Five Warriors, Ramayana-The Legend of Prince Ram, Sindbad, Hum Turn, Bhagrnati and Hanuman have captured the fancy of US studios and won prestigious awards.

Employment Opportunities
Although the animation industry in India is still in its infancy. It is fast emerging as a mega base for outsourcing animation and digital special effects production for Hollywood blockbusters and global studios such as Disney Pictures, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, John Carey, UK; Rainbow, Italy and Neptuno, Spain besides catering to the local market.

The cost for making a full-length animated film in America is $100 - $175 million while it costs not more than $15 - $25 million in India which is leveraging this cost advantage to divert business from Canada and SE Asian countries.

Internationally the animation industry can be categorised into two: Outsourcing and Original content. A majority of Indian companies are servicing contracts for the West and earn their bread and butter from low-end jobs like ‘in-betweening’ and ‘key framing’. The magic words for opening the doors to success are ownership of the Intellectual Property Rights of the animated feature. All outsourcing companies in India will eventually need to consider a paradigm shift and move over to creating original content.

While there are 10,000-odd animators in the country presently, there is a demand for at least 50,000. About 1000-1,500 animators are churned out every year but animation studios feel that they need additional training to match international quality benchmarks.

Besides film and television, the potential of this medium extends to diverse fields ranging from education to orthopaedics, aeronautics, robotics, reverse engineering, digitizing, fashion and research. While high-end gaming technology is emerging as a hot field globally, animation is touted to be the next big thing on the Internet as soon as the bandwidth constraints are resolved.

The Work
The animation process begins with the preparation of a Storyboard, which provides a visual script for the animation sequence. Then modelling is used to convert real objects to animated ones by optically scanning them and converting them to digital form. The next step is scripting/ movement control, which involves manipulating static images to give the illusion of moving pictures. Finally, rendering is used to make an object or character appear lifelike by manipulating light, colour, texture, shadow and transparency.

2-D animation is so manpower-intensive that it takes a team of 50-60 people working full-time for 2 weeks to make a simple 5-minute animation film! At an average of 24 frames per second, a film could end up using over 50,000 separate drawings (over 1. t4 lakh frames were rendered for Toy Story,using 8 lakh computer hours).

The hierarchy is as follows: every project has the Main/Lead Animator who draws the main character its movements and expressions. The In-between or Clean-Up Artist ‘renders’ or fills the intermediate gaps in the key drawings left by the Lead Animator. Then there are Junior Artists, Layout Artists, Background Artists and Character Designers. Typically, the complete pre-production package, including the blueprint or storyboard, recorded dialogues and exposure sheets come from the client. Indian artists then work on line drawing, colour filling, motion and detailing and send them to the client via satellite.

What it Takes
Animators must have excellent creative and artistic abilities - a flair for drawing, sketching or caricaturing (preferably a degree in graphic/applied/fine art) plus a good sense of humour and an observant eye to spot the incongruous. You need thorough knowledge of classical 2-D animation followed by proficiency in handling current animation and multimedia software i.e. ANIMO, MAYA, 3D Studio Max, Adobe% After Effects, Tictactoon, Flash, Giff Animator, ULead and a good! compositing software like Adobe Photo Shop, Adobe Illustrator or Coreft Dnw. While 2-D animation has almost reached a plateau globally,’ Flash and 3-D animation, being much more realistic are now the rage.

The skill-set required for 3D animation is far more intricate than for 2D and animation houses in the US, UK and Canada are on the lookout for alternate low cost production centres for 3D animation.

For the Indian animation industry this is an excellent opportunity! just waiting to be exploited provided we have competent manpower.

While an animator can do an entire 2D frame on his own, an entire team of artists have to work in tandem to get the lighting, composition, modelling and rigging right to compose a frame in 3D.

What you’ll Make
Starting off with approx. Rs.7, 000-Rs 10,000 p.m. as a trainees and between Rs.12,000-Rs 15,000 as a Junior Animator, you could command anywhere between Rs.20,000 - Rs 40,000 p.m., within a few years.

Where to Train
Numerous institutes have sprung up to turn you into a multimedia pro. But a word of advice: Don’t just settle for any of the two-bit courses offered at every nukkad these days.Most of these teaching shops focus on the software instead of honing your animation skills.

Animation’ is also taught as a paper in many BFA courses like those offered at the College of Art, Delhi and Chandigarh for instance. As there are few formal courses in this subject, some companies recruit fresh BFA graduates and put them through rigorous in-house training.

1.Aptech University (at Arena Multimedia Centres)
web site:www.arena-multimedia.com / www.aptechuniversity.ac.in

2. Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra (Extn Centres: Jaipur & A-7, Sector-1, Noida-201301)
web site:www.bitnoida.net

3.C-DAC multi-location, A-34, Indl Area, Phase-VIII, SAS Nagar, Mohali 160071 www.cedtimohali.org
web site:www.cdac.in

4.C-DAC, National Multimedia Resource Centre, Agriculture College, Near District Industries Centre, Shivajinagar, Pune 411005 (Mah)

5.Centre for Development of Imaging Technology, Chitranjali Studio Complex, Thiruvallom PO, Thiruvananthapuram 695027 (C-DIT) & Integrated Information Technology Centre, Thiruvananthapuram (Ker)
web site:www.c-drt.org

6.Film & Television Institute of India, Law College Road, Pune 411004 (Mah)
web site:www.ftiindia.com

7.Heart Animation Academy, 7 A, Road #12, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad-500034 (AP) & Mumbai

8.IIT-Guwahati, North Guwahati, Guwahati 781039 (Ass)
web site:www.iitg.ernetin

9.IIT-Mumbai, Industrial Design Centre, Powai, Mumbai 400076 (Mah)
web site:www.iitb.ac.in

10.National Institute of Design (NID), Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007 (Guj)
web site:www.nid.edu



Tags: ,




Leave a Trackback

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Comments

Leave a Reply