Xplora Design Skool in association with Education Times is organizing the first ever Animation Day Celebration in Gujarat. AnimationXpress.com is the online and industry media partner for the celebration. The event will be held on January 5 and 6, 2008 at Fun Republic Ahmedabad.
In order to make the two day programme exciting, four interesting contests have been announced. The ambience of the multiplex shall be colourfully creative with display of artworks made by more than 3000 Xplora students from across the nation. In the space of about 30000 sq ft, students work shall be displayed in about 12000 sq ft area. Some insightful seminars on animation by stalwarts have been lined up. The timings of the event are 10.30 am to 7.30 am on both the days. All the preliminary rounds of the contests shall be held on 5th, while on 6th the finals shall be conducted. Huge number of participants and visitors are expected to take benefit of the programme.
This event is called state level as entries have been invited from more than 15 cities of Gujarat. It is being organized in association with Education Times of The Times of India, while Radio Mirchi shall be covering the event live. Herein a Radio Mirchi representative shall randomly ask the visitors about which is the best animated character and also to speak in the voice of that character. This too will be in a contest format.
Speaking about how the concept to organize such an event come up, Rohit Swarup of Xplora Design Skool told AnimationXpress.com, “To be honest, over the last three years we have felt that there is huge lack of awareness regarding animation in all cities except metros, where media has created the hype. The other towns have a drastic lack of awareness. Our objective is to bring out creativity which has been limited to metros. Secondly the awareness should be spread in the right manner so that there is no misunderstanding or misconception regarding animation.”
Swarup added that a lot of research was carried out before finalizing on the content of the event. “Generally one finds that only computer related designing and use of software are highlighted. But when we visited studios in Vancouver, we found that the perspective there is that animation is hugely beyond just tools. This event is an extension of our belief at Xplora that the chief components while learning animation are story and script writing, then visualizing, story boarding, drawing and sketching 2D. Ofcourse there should also be mention of software. In the event, the creativity of the participants shall be explored in a big way. Another area to explore is management as the animator needs to know who his/her target audience is. Only screenings of demo reels of films are not enough but what and how one can do with in animation is significant, hence the exhibition will showcase studentsâ€? works.
Each of the contests is chosen with an objective to exhibit some or the other part of Animation.
With gaming being the craze, a Mega Gaming Challenge has been arranged titled â€?Xterminate – Gaming Xplodesâ€?. This is a contest for people who are crazy for gaming. This contest will be pitched between participants and college teams in a network gaming environment (FPS, Strategy & Car Racing games), wherein teams (of 2/ 4 members) or individuals can participate. The games for the contest would include Unreal Tournament, Age of Empires, Need for Speed – underground. Apart from pulling in the crowd, another objective of having this contest is the strong connection of animation with gaming and the belief that before getting into the intricacies it is important to feel the various forms of animation, especially a popular one. More than 170 entries have already been received in this section.
Another one is Story and Script writing Competition titled â€?Xaggerateâ€?, the theme for which is â€?India in 2050â€?. Herein the participant shall write a Script and Story using minimum of two characters of their imagination. He/she needs to describe these characters, an environment and the story depicting “India as in 2050”. In this contest colleges will pitch their teams for creating a short story and script on “India in 2050”, detailing of script and character (min. 2 characters), story telling skills, presentation will be the judging criteria just to name a few. Top 15 scripts from the total entries sent in PPT or on paper or softcopy shall short listed by a panel of judges.
The judges for the contest would be Prof Gautam Jain from MICA, Manish Baridia from Moving Pixel, Prof Rajesh Asrani from MICA, Xplora�s international faculty Rupert Morris (who was earlier with EA as senior animator).
Another competition is titled â€?Xhibit – Be Crowned as the Lord of Animationâ€?, where entries have been invited for Animation Show reel / Demo Reel (Professional & Armatures separate category). Through this category Xplora Design Skool wants to honor Animators from amongst us for creating master pieces. Professionals & Amateurs have to send in their existing work entries. It has to be an individual work and not a team work. Also the Demo reel has to be of an individual and not a company. Can be made in Flash, Maya, Max, Premier (using other related software). Entries will have to be both .exe or .wma file as well as the raw file for the panel to see the work and for the authenticity. Students of any institution have to have a certificate from the Institution certifying that it is an individual work and the same goes for Professionals. The judges for this contest are Rupert Morris, Manish Baridia and Tinu Sukadia.
The next interesting contest is �Xpression�, which is a Creative Drawing Competition with the theme �India Rising�. The aim of this competition is to inculcate the spirit of dreaming and putting the dreams on paper through this unique contest for college students. The judges for this competition are Prof N R Vakil, Director, CEP and Tinu Sukadia, CEO, Inverion Inc.
The display of students works titled �X Factor� will celebrate an awareness Campaign for the youth of Ahmedabad city and then this event shall be further taken forward across the nation. The exhibition shall also have live student work display in areas such as Claymation, Live software tricks, Great Animation and Web Development work by students.
In order to add to the knowledge dissemination, experts shall conduct seminars for the visitors. Rupert Morris shall be conducting a live workshop on �Organic texturing for human face� and another one on �Building texture and lighting�, all in Maya. He would also conduct a seminar on his experience at EA, requirements for game development and gaming pipeline. Guru Vaidya from Autodesk shall talk about tips and tricks in Maya 2008. While an expert from Adobe shall speak on Magic with Photoshop and Flash. Anand Gurnani, Co-founder and CEO, AnimationXpress.com shall conduct a seminar on �Career opportunities in the field of Animation and Gaming�.
Devang Nanavati, Contestant from Lead India and Prof Gautam Jain, Dean for MICA shall be the chief guests for prize distribution.
For more details regarding this exciting event, visit xdsindia.com and stay tuned to AnimationXpress for more!