The initiative aims to encourage the concept and art of storytelling among kids and is part of Disney Channel’s prowess to encourage kids to express themselves, Disney India along with Toonz Animation is conducting a nationwide competition for school-going children aged between 4-14 years of age.
‘Kahaani Masters 2014’, is a concept writing competition for proposed animation short videos, written in English or Hindi language only and shall run from a period of 13 July until 12 August from 12.00 am to 11:59 pm (“Contest Period”).
‘Kahani Masters’ will encourage the creative minds of the youngest generation and give them an opportunity to unleash their imagination and share their stories with the entire world through an animated movie scripted by the children themselves.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com Toonz Animation CEO P Jayakumar says: “It’s a one of a kind initiative and I am confident that this will really encourage kids to think of taking up animation as a career option in the future. We are expecting over 1,000 entries and the top five winners will get a chance to work with our animators to create a short animation feature of nearly 3 minutes, which will air on Disney Channel India in early 2015.”
Well known Animation film designer Dhimant Vyas along with Vaibhav Kumaresh will be judging the selection of the five winners from the entries received. The selected winners will then go through a three day intensive workshop session in Toonz Animations Studio in Trivandrum in September to fine tune their flair for storytelling and detailing.
According to Bikram Duggal, executive director – marketing kids channels, consumer products, retail, publishling and franchise, Disney India, there are four key brand promises that Disney India offers – kids can express themselves, follow their dreams, believe in themselves and celebrate their families. “With our marque property ‘Jet Set Go’, we have taken care of celebrating with the family and following one’s dreams. But, we have been keen on coming up with one property on kids expressing themselves. Since, Disney’s brand promise is – telling stories, the idea of doing ‘Kahaani Masters’, was to encourage kids to express themselves,” reveals Duggal.
There is no fixed format, it could be anything ranging from a story to a cartoon strip but should not be eclipsing more than 2-3 minutes of airtime.
“Everything, right from which colour pallet to select, to visualisation will be supervised by these kids with the animators only helping them in the execution. We want them to be as independent as possible to really nurture the talent in them,” Jayakumar exults.