All Entries in the "Recommended" Category
Get Ready For ANIFEST INDIA 2008!!
IT’S BACK!!!
TASI’s much awaited ANIFEST INDIA 2008 will be held this year on August 15th, 16th and 17th at IDC, IIT Powai in Mumbai.
They have already announced the ‘Call For Entries’ for the Viewers’ Choice Awards and this time there is an added category too.
1. Short Films : Students
2. Short Films : Professional
3. Advertising Commercials
The last date for submitting your entries is 15th July, 2008.
Lots of exciting stuff is being planned and with the beautiful IIT campus as the backdrop, there will be many interactive and hands-on workshops this year.
“Dekh Bhai Dekh” …worth a dekko!
Learning animation is not just about learning how to use the software. Art, literature, history, story-telling, film-making, music, acting… many different things go into it. You also need to watch a lot of good films to be able to create great films. That is what the students of NID, India’s premier animation school, do. But they don’t just stop at watching the inspiring films, they go one step ahead. They share them!
So here is a very nice effort by a bunch of NIDians - a blog where various contributors upload links to some amazing short films from across the world. Smit Shah and Rohit Iyer kick-started the film-recommendation network and were later joined by a lot of their peers. See the blog - DEKH BHAI DEKH - subscribe to it if you like and then come back and read this wacky interview with the duo that started it all!
AAA: How did you come upon the idea to create a blog like this? What was the ‘inspiration’ or thought behind it?
SMIT: All through my stay at NID, I came across a lot of good short films, animation and otherwise which we used to share amongst each others. But by November last year I realised there were a lot of people who had left NID, and we couldnt keep up with exchanging these films. So to share these inspirations I started a mailing list which had a lot of NIDians as well as non NIDians. Anyone who was interested could ask for an invitation to the mailing list, and a lot of people wanted the archives of those good films. The idea was simple, growing into a ‘one good animation a day in your inbox’. It was also to provide as much information about the film maker and the production houses. We try to look for more information about the film on the net and include it as well. It wasnt until mid jan that this mailing list was converted to a blog, and what an appropriate name Rohit came up with.
ROHIT: I’m sure Smit must have started it out of boredom… or to show off (he likes doing that!). He started sending everyone these mails and he added me to the list. Me… I’m like efficiency - as cool as it was to have the links in my inbox every day, I got kind of fed up of being linked to a trazillion different video sites. So I figured the best way to do this is to have a blog where we could embed the videos and group members could sign up and post new videos and an update would be sent to subscribers’ inbox through a feed. This really helps because you can look at the videos at a glance and not sift through lots of emails to find something.
So we also invited all the people in the mailing list to be part of the blog, so anyone can sign in and post stuff. There was a concern about what’s the point in having a blog like this when there are so many other such blogs/sites online already. So after some thought, we kind of figured that these are videos recommended by people we KNOW and not just random shorts. The idea behind posting on the blog is that we want to share what WE like and express our tastes and discoveries through this, as opposed to creating some sort of archive.
The name “Dekh Bhai Dekh” came about because when creating the blog, I had to give it a name and I preferred something in Hindi. Trivia: Dekh Bhai Dekh is the name of an old TV show from nineties starring Shekhar Suman, which used to air on Sony Entertainment Television!
TASI Upcoming Session on 31st May: Pre-production for Animation
On Saturday, 31st May, 2008 at the P C Saxena Auditorium in IIT Powai, Mumbai, TASI is holding session on Pre-production for Animation.
Three speakers will share their recent work and elucidate on the entire process of conceptualizing and planning up untill the actual production begins.
Santosh Sawant - Creative Director, Phoebus Creations, Mumbai
Uttam Pal - Independent Animator & Film-maker, Mumbai
Rudra Matsa - Founder & CEO, Panel Animation Studios, Hyderabad
With examples from their own films, the speakers will take you through the process from concept to the final blue-print. Phases discussed will include intellectual property (IP) creation, story, script, storyboarding, animatics, character and environment design, colour keys, sound design and much more!
Visit the TASI website for more information.
Creature Discomforts! Aardman’s Animation with a Message
There must be very few true-blue animation fans who haven’t heard of Aardman’s Creature Comforts. Now, they can also see Creature Discomforts, a beautiful campaign created by them for Leonard Cheshire Disability. The series is based on one experiences of real disabled people with lovable characters and a profound message. The characters have been voiced by the very people on whom the characters are based. The website is worth a visit for two reasons: to change the way you see disability and for the brilliant characters and animation.
Must Read! Innovation Lessons from Pixar’s Brad Bird
A very interesting and insightful article - if you are in anyway connected with the world of animation, this is a must read. In fact, this interview with Brad Bird from the McKinsey Quarterly has become so popular that it is being written about in other blogs and the pdf version (created by some faithful reader) is being circulated around as well.
Since one needs to be a registered user of The McKinsey Quarterly to be able to read the complete article, here is the link to a very nice review and concise version of it from Gigaom.com by Carleen Hawn. It begins like this:
This week The McKinsey Quaterly asks: what does stimulating the creativity of animators have in common with developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs? Apparently, a lot.
In Innovation lessons from Pixar, McKinsey writes:
Brad Bird makes his living fostering creativity. Academy Award-winning director (The Incredibles and Ratatouille) talks about the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale. He also explained the value of “black sheep”—restless contributors with unconventional ideas.
Read the complete aticle from Gigaom.com here.
If you would like to read the original article that came out in The McKinsey Quarterly, go here.
A quick look at what the original article says:
- Pixar’s Brad Bird makes his living fostering creativity. In an interview, this director of two Academy Award–winning animated films (The Incredibles and Ratatouille) describes how he pushes teams of animators beyond their comfort zones, encourages dissent, and builds morale.
- Bird’s experiences and anecdotes hold powerful lessons for executives in any organization seeking to nurture innovation.
The article also contains an interactive feature including audio clips from the interview, stills from several of Bird’s projects, and a brief biography.
Animated Shorts For Animal Planet by Aardman
Must see : Brilliant clay animation series by Aardman for Animal Planet.
Watch: AnimationMentor.com’s Shawn Kelly’s Webinar
Available only till 29th April, this is a must watch video- learn the tips and tricks of animation from Shawn Kelly of AnimationMentor.com If you liked the free downloadable e-book I had written about in one of my earlier posts, this is something you shouldn’t miss!
Don’t Miss! Making of TZP’s Animation repeats on 26th April 2008
TASI’s workshop on the Making of the animation and VFX for Taare Zameen Par saw such an overwhelming response that it will now be repeated on Saturday, the 26th of April at Whistling Woods International, Film City, Mumbai (view map)
Session Starts: 2:00 pm
Speakers:
Pankaj Khandpur from VCL (CG and VFX), Dhimant Vyas (Clay Animation) & Vaibhav Studios (2D Animation)
Registration:
TASI Members - Entry FREE (Please carry your TASI ID cards) Non-members - Students - Rs. 50/- and Professionals - Rs.100/-
Please Note: Students please carry your ID cards to avail the student discount.
To pre-register, please contact:
Ravish Shanbhag: 9833105305 | ravish@tasionline.org
Yogi Chopra: 9820366313 | yogi@tasionline.org
Ritesh Reddy: 9869403527 | ritesh@tasionline.org
