Can you share a little about the journey of Native Puppets?
Native Puppets is an Online Training Program focused on providing high quality training in Character Animation and is taught by highly experienced animators working in the industry. The idea of Native Puppets had been looming in my mind since the year 2010 to address the need for quality training specific to ‘character animation’ in India. Beginning of ’11, I started working on the idea over weekends and after-work hours and it was all by doing necessary research, structuring the curriculum, and building the student site, the character designs and the rigs and then teaming up with the right people to work-with in building things together.
Everything about the program, right from the curriculum, the character designs and the rigs, has been designed and developed by leading working professionals working in some of the best studios in the country. The program features an interactive ‘social network-kind’ platform and this enables a student to learn and network with professional animators who have years of industry experience working on international quality projects.
We would like to know more about how interesting was your journey in this creative field?
I was amazed by what I saw as a kid in the movie ‘Aliens’. And then all the super-cool graphics in HBO and Nat Geo saw me take up ‘motion-graphics’ as a starting point in my career. And then I happened to watch Daniel Martinez Lara’s (the awesome dude from ‘Pepeland’) short animation clips, which completely blew my mind away. Watching those clips, I soon jumped on to my journey to become a Character Animator. I worked with Tata Elxsi (VCL) close to 5 years, was Lead Animator on the Walt Disney – Yash Raj produced Roadside Romeo, which was a lot fun working on Indian-masala animated movie for the first time in India. While I was working full-time at Tata, I also studied and graduated from AnimationMentor.com. I was very fortunate to be the first set of guys to get hired by DreamWorks India Unit. In fact, I feel so happy to share with you all that I would be celebrating 5 years at the Company this May and it has been such a continuous learning process all these years that I feel blessed to be surrounded by some awesome talented artists at work.
Please share with us about the idea behind this free Webinar series?
The idea behind these Webinar’s is fairly simple – providing opportunity for students and aspirants to network and learn from senior talent, who have considerable industry experience. The best part – people with reasonably good Internet speeds, can participate in such interactive sessions, right from their homes, by breaking all geographical and travelling constraints. In these webinars, one can expect to directly hear from these experts on what it is to work in a production environment, the skill sets to focus on, the attitude to develop, some common mistakes first-timers make and have any apprehensions cleared.
Could you put light on the experts who would be taking the sessions?
For the current series, we have Dhimant Vyas (who has worked at Aardman Studios, Zynga and also created the clay-mation for Taare Zameen Par movie), Rishab Chitroda (Animation Supervisor at Technicolor), Javier Alonso (Lead Lighter at DreamWorks India Unit), PC Vikram (Art Director / Concept Artist at Technicolor), Abhay Waghmare (Ex-Animation Supervisor at Prana Studios), Deepak Ganguly (Animation Lead at Tata Elxsi), Vinod Gowda (Independent Film-maker / Photographer), Rajesh PK (Sr. Animator at DreamWorks India Unit) and more to follow in the coming months. Sharing about the past, we had Vaibhav Kumaresh Creative Direction from Vaibhav Studios, Prashanth Cavale and I from DreamWorks Dedicated Unit had conducted one such session.
And, who all are eligible to attend the webinars? Are there any pre-requisites required?
Anyone who is aspiring to take up animation and its relative art forms as a career will benefit from attending these webinars. The only pre-requisite is to have good Internet speed (at least 1mbps) and updated version of their browsers. One can follow the LINK HERE to register for the events. Also, as these are going to be a series of webinars for months to follow, one can sign-up on the given link to receive an invitation to the webinars.
So a student can be in any part of the world and still learn from the program?
Absolutely right! We have a student from the USA (Florida), another Indian student studying in Dubai and from other different cities in India, like Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Mangalore. All of them are plugged into the same classroom, Live with their Mentors at the same time. It’s pretty cool and fun way to be able to do this! And with the whole concept of studying animation online, you save on re-location costs, travel times. All you need is a reasonably good Internet speed and a willingness to learn.
We would like to know about the topics that would be covered in these webinar series?
The topics will be based on the specific area of the speaker’s expertise. Each webinar is scoped out for 1.5 hours, including Q&A time and yes, they are all free! There will be two different sessions on April 28th and more to follow in May and June. One can follow the LINK HERE to register for the current and future events.
Apart from this webinar series, Can you elaborate more on the programs offered and the learning process on ‘How it Works’?
The program consists of 5 Levels – starting from the foundation level of principles of animation, progressing on to body mechanics and then onto acting. Each Level is 14 weeks of focused assignments and the students get critiqued every week on their submissions, every week. Students interact via ‘live video conference’ with the mentors weekly, to talk about their assignments and discuss on topics specific to the week’s assignment. The student site also features online forums and a social-network-format where in students can post the developments on their assignments and get feedback from their peers and mentors before uploading it for review.
Would you like to reveal on what more is going to happen at Native Puppets in the coming months?
We are focused on providing high quality training in character animation and will continue to expand into other related horizons like game and creature animation, which we are very excited about! And starting this May, we will be introducing an 11-week course for complete beginners – ‘Learn Maya: Getting Started in Animation’
Where can one get information about Native Puppets?
The official site with all relevant information on the Program, FAQ’s, Fees, Mentors, How it Works is all provided at www.nativepuppets.com. And yes, we are on social media – facebook.com/nativepuppets (where we regularly post latest news, updates and promotional offers). Also, the next batch would be commencing on May 13th.