Getting admission into an animation institute in India has always been easy. Most institutes set to make a quick buck offer six to 12 month courses which claim to groom anyone who joins their course into professional animators. Whether these courses actually deliver to their promise or not is however debatable.
If the clear dissent of industry players at the quality of education imparted by animation institutes in the country is an indication of things to come, getting admission into an animation school will soon be much tougher.
Amongst the first institutes to set up tough entrance tests is the newly instituted Toonz Webel Academy, a joint venture of Toonz Animation India and WEBEL (West Bengal Electronics Industry Development Corporation Limited).
Differentiating Toonz Webel Academy from the rest of the animation training institutes of the country, Prosenjit Ganguly Creative Designer -Toonz, the person in charge for overlooking the selection process says: “We intend to churn out professional animators not software operators.”
Describing the procedure followed for selecting students amongst the many applicants, Ganguly points out: “The selection process was divided into three levels. Firstly all applicants sent in their CVs along with their portfolio, sifting through which we selected 225 applicants to appear for the entrance tests .”
He adds that the applicants were then put through aptitude tests wherein their drawing skills, visualisation, perception of space and perspective were observed. The applicants also had to give an acting demo where their ability to express was judged.
Says Ganguly: “Applicants for the 3D course had to further take a test where they had to conceptualise and sculpt a character out of clay, their dexterity, deftness and creativity being put to test.”
The sifting process saw the list of 225 applicants being honed down to 90. These 90 were then put through a gruelling personal interview and only 50 of them got through and were accepted as students for the institute’s first batch. Of these half were put into the 3D course and the other half into the 2D module.
On being asked as to what were the essentials that they were looking for in applicants, Ganguly replied: “Firstly, of course, drawing skills. The ability to learn and to be resourceful is also something that we look out for.”
