Making way for children to showcase their talent, Toon Club director, Tehzeeb Khurana has introduced a new program called Toon Shorts.
Speaking to Animationxpress.com Tehzeeb shared, “Toon shorts is a program where students become young film makers and make their own short films. In this program, children ideate a socially relevant concept, storyboard, animate and direct their 2 minute or less duration film all by themselves under Toon Club supervision.”
Toon Shorts concept was tested in 2004 when three short films of two minutes each directed and animated by children received international attention and accolades in various festivals in France, Italy and Finland.
Commenting on this Tehzeeb shared, “Toon Shorts‘ films created in 2004 were funded by Zonsta Entertainment fund for Indian Children (ZEFIC). Zonsta approached Toon Club kids to come up with stories which could then be created into animation films which they would further send to festivals around the world. They selected two stories which were then directed and animated by the writers of the stories.”
This year three children have been selected. “Out of the 100 odd eligible kids who have learnt animation at Toon Club, I have hand picked only those who have exhibited extra-ordinary passion and commitment”, said Tehzeeb.
The three short listed kids are Nishiki Bhavnani, Yash Choksi and Simran Gursahani.
Nishiki is a sixteen years old girl, passionate about animals and closely working with PETA. She joined Toon Club in 2003 and made her first short film “Man‘s Best Friend?” in 2004. She loves animating and telling stories using this medium.
Drawing and making comic strips is what eleven years old Yash loves. He is very serious about animation as he hero worships his Uncle who is also a senior animator at Crest and wants to grow up to be just like him. He has been attending Toon Club for the past 1.5 years.
Extremely talented and creative Simran, ten years old, showed great interest in animation within months of joining the mixed media program at Toon Club. She is very good in computers and learns new softwares with ease.
These kids have already finished the first phase of the program of writing a script and creating a storyboard.
On a concluding note, Tehzeeb shared, “This program takes the kids through all the nitty-gritty‘s of story-telling, film language and animation film-making. In fact, some of the concepts covered in this program are taught at film schools. This is intensive program and cannot be done by any child. Only children with that extra commitment and passion for animation can take on this challenging program. They have to be prepared to work really hard and sacrifice all holidays till their films are complete.”