Rahul Mistry, a fine arts student told AnimationXpress.com, "I am glad I came for the workshop. Shyam Ramanna’s expert and frank advice has inspired me to join an animation course soon, something that I was confused about."

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Later in the day Dhiraj Shrivastava from DASA conducted a live demonstration of Matte Painting which was well received by the audience. The electronic band Tatva Kundalini ended the day some rousing music.

After its inception in 2003 with an intention to provide talented artists to Digital Asia Concepts Limited (DACL), Thailand founded by Ramanna, DASA now has established its Indian head office at Pune and a company branch at Ahmedabad.

DASA Pune Co-founder Nikhil Bhagat said, “We are proud to have the maestro himself with his vast production knowledge which forms the backbone of DASA. Shyam Ramanna's constant support and vital inputs are crucial in providing a strong leverage to the company. DASA was established to provide quality animators to the production house DACL in Thailand. Ramanna has trained animators at DASA Thailand himself and his students are either working all over the world or have started their own production houses."

Following are excerpts from Shyam Ramanna's responses to students' queries during the Q&A session:

Animation as a career:

Animation can do a great many things. DASA Thailand students have worked on the recently completed Dubai Land cinematic walkthrough Project at DACL. They couldn't build a city without animation, as all the blueprints for the city were made using animation, right down to the minutest detail – the cars, furniture and people. There is a lot of activity in the television, advertising and film industries and special effects, computer graphics and animation are now an integral part of these mediums.

Animation in India:

We started animation with antique computers but we loved our work. Animation is perhaps the only career where you can sit in front of a PC and create wonderful designs and characters without any raw materials, using only your imagination. There is nothing like doing animation in India – most of the time you animate – you do it for the world.

On Gaming:

Gaming is very big and difficult too! There is a lot of competition right now. The career course provided at DASA on animation also prepares a student to apply for game design and game animation jobs.

Animation Education:

I am now moving to the education side of animation. I want India to be the hub for 3D animation. We have only about 600 real animators, though we need many more. India is being looked upon as a major source for digital content service provider because of its abundance of talent at cheaper costs as compared to the world. An Indian animator costs one-tenth of that in the US. Though we do have major competition from the Chinese who are famous for their very cheap labour, but we have an edge over them as they have to translate all the software into Chinese before they can even start. According to the recent reports they seem to be learning the language very fast. Hence we need to plan our strategies very vigilantly.

Tools and software:

Don’t get stuck to a software. All major 3D software work more or less the same way. Software like Autodesk 3DS Max and Maya do good work. Maya is most widely used in India because of its robust nature. There are many free tools too. Go to the internet and look for simpler, new software if you need to get started.

Every software has its own pros and cons. Some software give the best results for a specific task in a production pipeline; so I may prefer Softimage XSI over Maya as I can work with it more comfortably. For animation, I might also use Motion Builder which is real-time software. I don’t have to render to playback the animation.

On clay animation:

3D animation can now have up to 95 per cent of feel of clay animation but there is a market for clay animation, especially in the advertising industry.

DASA's initiatives:

In DASA, just to create realistic models or character motion, we send people to the zoos to observe the animals and their behaviour.

DASA will take initiative and have a degree course in Animation in a year or two.

DASA will soon have training in motion capture in India. It is already setup in its Thai office.

Upcoming projects:

Crest is working on five Hollywood feature films including a co-production with Lionsgate.

Animation films in India:

There are certain difficulties in cost recovery when it comes to the Indian market as the viewing market is still small. 3D films are easy but expensive to make as compared to 2D.

mrigank.dhaniwala@animationxpress.com

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