Surprise, surprise…..
For long, the Indian animation industry has been demanding and talking about the need for long term degree courses in animation and gaming to be started by educational establishments of repute.
The general feeling is that the fast track courses are definitely useful to get in 3D artists, but there is also a very critical need for the existence of thorough value based animation education Degrees to nurture and create human resource with a different and much required set of competencies.
Slowly, silently, keeping a very low profile, one of the most reputed institutions in the country, Birla Institute of Technology (Noida Centre) has been running a Degree course (B.Sc) in Animation and Multimedia since the past 18 months. A year ago the Institution started the same Degree course at its branch in Jaipur.
Bit Noida recently held a seminar on animation, ‘India Animates – The Next Hub – 2010‘ on Sunday 16 April 2006. The seminar sported a good balance of speakers from Industry, Academia and The government. Dhruva Interactive CEO Rajesh Rao, Phoebus Media CEO Rahul Bakshi and Gecko Animation CEO Paresh Mehta represented the industry part while the educational & government part was represented by Former Vice Chancellor of IGNOU, Professor M M Pant, Consortium for Educational Communication, CEC‘s Professor G.D Sharma and the Educational Advisor to BIT Dr CP Srivastava, the director B.P Joshi of BIT Noida, and Senior Management from BIT Noida and Bit Jaipur including the Director of Jaipur Campus Major Narpat Singh, Ajay Joshi (who is the supervisor of the animation education at BIT) and Makrand Joshi head Faculty for Animation at BIT.
The seminar also included a showcase of some of the work of the students which included some short films with very interesting concepts as well as execution.
Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, Ajay Joshi from BITNoida commented “The typical aspirant we come across says ; I am 17, I have just finished school, I live in a small town – I dream to make cartoons, animations, create VFX. My nearby college in the city, leave alone my district, does not offer a course in animation or multimedia, my parents don‘t have that kind of money to send me to Australia, Italy, UK or Canada. It took me 12 years of schooling to clear my fundamentals on Language, Science and Arts etc.., can I become a thorough expert in animation/gaming in 3-6-9 months by courses offered at a nearby shopping centre? I don‘t want to do a general graduation course, which any way is not going to help me achieve my dreams and I will be wasting my time. I want to go a college, do a graduation in Animation/Gaming and also experience college life….. WHERE DO I GO ???”
“These are the comments heard from a majority of students across India – the Future designers, Artists, animators, game designers and visual effects pros from the talented young India. If India is to reach somewhere in Animation and Gaming globally – we need Colleges and Universities all across India to come up with affordable Animation, Multimedia and Gaming, Graduation and Post-Graduation courses” he added.
“Such a course has started at BIT but it should reach every possible University and College in India. It is being said for India that it is late – China, Korea etc. are ahead of us – but today this the very opportunity we have, for all of us to join hands and build a much needed educational set-up with active participation of the Industry and Educational Institutions” he further added.
Putting together the batches at both Jaipur and Noida, the institution has a total of close to 150 students a large majority of these were present at the seminar. A large number of students at BIT come from small cities, towns and villages.
In a speech full of select phrases and quotations of contemprary thought leaders and acclaimed authors such as Thomas Friedman, Chief Guest Professor M M Pant kept the audience spellbound with his up to date and profound knowledge about animation as well as emerging technology.
“Do not become landless labourers” he said, referring to the trend of outsourcing service based work in the country. “Develop competencies and be tool agnostic, do not depend on your knowledge of one software or the other because the moment a certain kind of technology gets obsolete, you too will get obsolete if your value is based only on the know how of that”
“Being artists it is very certain that you students dont like things like mathematics but dont create mental blocks for approaching the same because all of the tasks that you perform using animation software are created by Algorithms running in the backend. Understanding some of these will help you have a much stronger handle on the way you work” he added.
The Keynote address was delivered by Dhruva‘s Rajesh Rao. Interestingly Dhruva Interactive has half a chapter devoted to it in noted author Thomas Friedman‘s book, The World is Flat. Friedman has used Dhruva as an example of a small company that is now successful globally by plugging into the new forces that are ‘flattening‘ the world.
Rao elaborated on Achieving the gold standard in terms of quality, he stated,”It has been a long journey for Dhruva since we first started and the undying aspiration to deliver the best quality has got us this far. I urge all of you students to aspire to create the best quality and with the bright faces that I see here, there is no reason why you can not do it”
Later on speaking to Animation ‘xpress he added,”A vision for 2010 is not complete without a long term goal of growing a healthy local market for Animation and Games. Look at Korea. They have a $6billion games industry almost completely with local content. Their government played a key role in the early stages. So is the case in China. The Chinese Govt has created a fund of $100million for the creation of original Chinese gaming content. Vision 2010 for India would need a ecosystem in which content companies set goals towards IP creation, education entities provide the industry with skilled manpower and the Govt. that can play a critical role as an enabler with policy and incentives for creation of local content”
Phoebus Media CEO Rahul Bakshi whose animated series Akbar Birbal is currently on air on Cartoon Network next spoke about what studios expected of students “One of the most important things for students is to learn to work as a team. Another very important thing is to remember that job jumping does not help in the long run. Changing jobs every six months may increase your disposable income, but remember that when you apply to work at a good studio that‘s looking to do a feature or a good project, you will never be selected because your resume will make it obvious your tendency to jump jobs while good projects and features at least take eighteen months”
Rahul also elaborated upon the opportunities saying,”A big opportunity for animation artists lies in Online Education. I am sure that this area will be a major growth area in the years to come. Within animation, there are various kinds of business models, like studios which offer animation production services for international projects as well as studios that work on their own content creation. At Phoebus Media we are completely involved in IP creation and we firmly believe that it is there that the future lies”
Gecko Animation CEO Paresh Mehta shared,” I very strongly feel that there are three groups of peope, one who makes things happen, one who see things happen and the third group who wonder wht happened. I am afraid that Indian animation might fall into the third category if we dont get our act together. We need to be united as an industry, there has to be lot of sharing of knowledge, lot of bon homie. If some studio in the US loses an assignment, the other studios are there to help out, that doesn‘t happen in India pretty often”
The presentations by the studio heads were followed by Technology vendor Autodesk taking a workshop on their various software.
A major highlight of the day was the interaction session where students fired a volley of questions regarding gaming to Dhruva‘s Rao. It was remarkable to note the high interest in gaming amongst the students, who even before their gaming semester began, had read up quite a lot on the subject and were eager to know more.
The eagerness to know more, probably was the highlight at the Industry, Academia, Student interaction at the BIT Noida seminar on animation, and it is that eagerness of the Indian youth to know more and to act on their knowledge that makes India such a great potential hub for animation, gaming and VFX!