With a variety of activities including Panorama Screenings, Key notes, Panels, Animation Practical sessions, pre production and animation film making discussions, Awards, exhibits, showcases, lots of prizes and a 1600 strong enthusiastic audience (2 days combined), the ABAI fest‘07 was an animation festival in the true sense of the word.
The festival had several memorable instances: The genuinely appreciative standing ovation that the Dream Works Animation team received from the audience for their extremely valuable sessions; the opening speeches by Director of Bennett & Coleman Co. Ltd. AP Parigi and South Superstar Ramesh Arvind; felicitation of Prasad Group Chairman A Ramesh & Uncle Pai who on day 2, took the mike and broke into a song impromptu; the crowd‘s roaring applause as they cheered the ABAI award winners for CG Tantra‘s ‘Animation Tadka Marke‘; Film maker Govind Nihalani‘s thoughtful address on animation film making; Vaibhav, Gitanjali, Sekhar Mukherjee, Govindji talking about Indian Animation film making; PC Vikram‘s retort that great IP creation necessarily doesn‘t need high budgets and resources and many more wonderful moments.
Way to go ABAI! Hats off to the entire organizing committee including Ashish SK (Anirights), Aruna Kumar (MAAC), Chetan S (ANTS), C Prakash (Raydrops), Balakrishna Muddur (Mediateck), Vishal S (The Design Tree), Vinod H (Anirights) Nandish Domlur (Paprikaas) as well as the CG Tantra team deserve an Award each themselves for hosting and organizing such a wonderful event.
We at AnimationXpress.com were thoroughly delighted to be a part of the ABAI Fest and shall bring to you a serialized session wise coverage throughout the week. We start today with an overview of the fest…
To begin with, in a nutshell all the sessions and activities were inspiring and a thorough knowledge enhancing experience.
The felicitation of Uncle Pai and Prasad Group Chairman Ramesh Prasad for their tireless contribution to the Indian entertainment industry was a great moment and so was the keynote given by A.P Parigi, Director of Bennett & Coleman Co. Ltd.
The central theme of talks by all these three luminaries was passion, patience and perseverance. “Believe in yourself and keep at it. Success will be yours,” Parigi told Bangalore‘s animation artists, entrepreneurs and students.
“How does one see the future before it arrives?” began A.P Parigi, Director, Bennet, Coleman. Urging the audience to have a foresight and take a step towards realizing their dreams no matter how bizarre they might be, Parigi definitely ignited a spark in the minds of all those who attended.
Ramesh Arvind who is also involved with animation gave his perspective on animation and his love for creativity. “I love to flirt with animation in my films,” said the superstar, adding, “Nearly all my films including my latest film have some new animation or Visual Effect element.”
After a refreshing tea break, all came rushing back to the auditorium for the case study on Little Krishna by the Anirights team, during which they discussed how they worked on the episodes from scratch and the processes involved to get the desired result.
Next was a panel discussion on Meeting challenges and defining critical success factors.‘ Members on the panel included Naveen Gupta (COO, MAAC), Jai Natrajan (Animation Consultant, MEL), Yunus Bukhari ( CEO, ART.ERY Animation and FX), Prosenjit Ganguly (Creative Head, Toonz Animation), Nirav Shah (GM, Strategic Planning, Zapak), Anand Gurnani (CEO and Founder, AnimationXpress.com), and Kannan (HP). An issue of prime concern that was repeatedly broached was education and what steps the industry should take to overcome this talent crunch and the type of courses that should be made available.
Extremely well managed and organized, ABAI Fest ‘07 brought to India the tremendously talented team from Dreamworks Animation which worked on all three parts of Shrek. A crowd puller, the session on story by Philippe, story board by Dave Smith and character set up by Larry Cutler was a success gauging from the applause and participation by the audience. Dave kept the audience in splits with his animated way of explaining the storyboard process and what it is like to pitch your ideas to the producer and director of the movie. To say the least, presentations by each of them were enormously informative and left many in the audience in awe.
Looking at a different but a significant part of the animation eco system, Sridharan from AntimaFx and Nirav Shah from Zapak spoke at length about Game design and Developmet and Game business & evolving culture respectively. While Nirav spoke more on the businiess aspect, Sridhar provided in depth knowledge and step by step process of game design.
The parallel screening of the Indian Panorama of Animated films ran to a packed and overfull house. Audience could just not have enough of these wonderful films. And the panorama continued into day 2.
Also part of the activities were the Animation War Zone sessions which got in a dedicated participation.
The first half of day two saw parallel sessions on VFX and Master Class in Character Design, Styling, Color Keys, Story Development & Story Boarding. Showcasing work from their respective studios speakers including the likes of Seshaprasad (Rhythm and Hues), Vishal Anand (VCL, Tata Elexsi), Amit Gupta (Prime Focus), Mohan (Prasad Labs) and Srinivas (Indian Artists) covered various topics such as VFX in movies, ad films, DI in films and skin grafting.
R&H Alpenliebe TVC, showcase of Sivaji work by EFX, digital skin grafting by Indian Artists, Ta Ra Rum Pum by VCL and Prime Focus TVC showcase took the audience by storm.
The session running simultaneously concentrated more on the artistic side of animation with Greg Acuna of Pala Flicks talking about script writing, Shyam of Anirights demonstrating speed painting, PC Vikram sharing about stylized illustrations and character development, Siju Thomas showcasing skills in how to use the Z brush with emphasis on anatomy while Vincent Edwards and Vikram Veturi explained animation direction. Those who attended this session would definitely agree that all of them can be projected on a different level of creativity with a wealth of talent.
With an increase in the number of animated features being announced in India, an apt session was themed around Indian Animation Film Making – The Journey and the Road ahead. On the panel were Film Maker Govind Nihalani, Maestro Vaibhav Kumaresh, Animation Diva Geetanjali Rao, NID‘s Sekhar Mukherjee, and was moderated by CG Tantra‘s Chand.
Stealing the show on the second day was Dream Works again, but this time with presentations on Character Animation by Jason Schleifer , Visual Challenges by Phillipe Gluckman and special effects by Matt Baer. Overwhelmed by the passion with which the team shared their expertise and willingly answered queries, the auditorium resounded with accolades for them. A truly memorable moment included the entire ABAI Team as well as the entire DreamWorks team together on stage.
The last discussion on the final day of the fest was on ‘Pre-Production Challenges” – Making Short films Vs. Long Form,‘ touching upon topics such as handling of IP as opposed to an outsourcing model, budget constraints and lots more. Giving their views on these important issues were P C Vikram, Vikram Veturi, Greg Acuna, Amit Anand, Vincent Edwards and Siju Thomas. The panel gave some very encouraging and heartening points.
Throughout the two day event, assisting the ABAI Team was the CG Tantra team which worked relentlessly organizing workshops and competitions like Tadkaa Maar Ke, Modeling Challenge and Animation Warzone while AnimationXpress was there all along to cover the activities. The fest concluded with awarding the winners of the contests with prizes with enviously great prizes among a host of others. And to add a personalized touch, quite a few from the audience were awarded for being “A good audience” “Good questions” Best booth which was won by Kaushik Sonawala of Digital Waves for AMD and so on.
A fest without a bash is not possible. Organized at the Ashoka Hotel, at the post event party everyone who attended the fest let their hair down and jigging to music and not to miss the sumptuous spread that was laid out.
So even as the two day fest came to an end, it heralded the spirit and renewed the vigour of Indian happening Animation, VFX & Gaming community.
The event which got a huge support from the industry had sponsors including HP, NVIDIA, (Platinum) AMD, Autodesk, Paprikaas Interactive (Gold), Apple (Kit) MAAC (Lunch), Ants, Foundry Networks, Hitachi, Manipal Education, Net App, Takshaa, Toonskool, Whistling Woods & Wacom.
Event Partners are CG Tantra, supported by TASI, iSearch and eFactor. The Magazine Partner was Animation Reporter, while the Official Industry Media Partner was AnimationXpress.com
Stay tuned as we bring you a serialized session wise coverage for the next few days!
