Balancing the educational needs of students with hands on practical experience, BIG AIMS conducted an interactive seminar on July 13, 2012 highlighting ‘Production Process- The Making of Shaktimaan’ by the crew of series at their Dhole Patil Road centre.
Anand Pandey- Line Producer and Vikram Veturi- Director enthralled the audience with their technical and aesthetic basics of animation production, involving the three stages: pre-production, production and post-production. The process pipeline from concept creation, character development and performance to compositing and post production was discussed in detail. Not just that, career options, interesting snippets from the series of Shaktimaan, benefits and global value of pursuing a career in animation and general idea of what to expect in this fast growing industry was also brought to light.
“Trying to come across the screen with a character that people can relate to is the first challenge. In the series of Shaktimaan, audiences were already familiar with the live action hero ‘Mukesh Khanna’ so the evolution was to revive the original and give a new form because ‘Predictability brings in monotony’. The script was ably resurrected by Dhrubo Banerjee, Creative Initiative along with Jeffrey scott,” said Vikram.
“Six years of continuous effort, many sittings and green signal from Mukesh ji, and lot of research under the mentorship of our CEO, Ashish Kulkarni, enabled us to get associated with Nickelodeon, the most popular kids channel and initiate the animated series of Shaktimaan. With 13 episodes completed and telecasted on the channel, the team continues to develop its creative content and we are aiming for 56 episodes to complete the series,” said Anand.
The special guest for the day was Subhash Kotwal, an alumnus of Sir J J School of Art & NID and now the Dean, ISB&M Design School. He added, “Read, study, practice, delve, probe, investigate and, above all, be flexible, keep an open mind. The world is changing fast. Don’t get caught in the corner of the ring. Keep moving and have fun. It is all about effective storytelling and filmmaking; infuse the classical with modern software techniques. Sky is the limit for a creator.”
With an auditorium packed with students and invitees, questions coming in from all directions, it was a day looked forward to with great zeal and enthusiasm at Reliance Animation.