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Interview with Virender Singh Rathore, Animation Film Director 31 May 2010 04:55 PM Virender Singh Rathore is an Animation Film Director with over fourteen years of experience in the field of animation. An alumni of ZICA, he was trained in Animation Film Making under Russian Masters Alexander Davidov and Vladimir Tarasov of Soyuz Multi Film, Moscow. One of the pioneers of Clay Animation in India with his famous film ‘Gaseous Clay‘, he went on to work on some of the best brands and clients including MTV, Bisleri, Cadbury, Amaron, Nestle, Fido, KTB, Videocon to name a few. His work ranges from 2D, Clay Animation, Object Animation, Animatronics to 3D Supervision. He recently announced his company ‘the animation garage‘ or TAG, India‘s first dedicated experimental animation studio. AnimationXpress.com‘s Raoul Lobo had a chance to chat with Virender about ‘the animation garage‘ and experimental animation as a medium.
What is Experimental Animation? Experimenting with Animation. We all, to a certain extent know how to work with frames, what matters is how we use those frames to communicate in an innovative way. It‘s a mixing of existing animation styles and creating new ones to tell a story effectively. I feel every story brings with it a certain mood, texture, music, style and demands to be told in a certain way, and to do so, not only do we have to experiment with 3D and 2D, but also look beyond. Stop-motion as a medium offers you that possibility.
Tell us about ‘the animation garage‘ I remember when I got into animation in 1995; it used to be fun, even though we were not sure about its future. We had great ideas, creative people, great energy levels, a craving to learn and fortunately for us, animation in India grew and did see a great time. But as we turned into Animation BPOs, it became more about business, cubicles, shifts and 9 to 5s. To a certain extent it was necessary, and it did provide jobs to the younger generation of animators. But somehow, we were growing longer, not wider. To become a wholesome industry, we should‘ve looked at all the animation art forms equally. We did like the idea of doing stop-motion whenever we saw some inspiring work, but never actually did anything towards it, our exploration stayed limited to Clay Animation. I always felt the need to explore Stop-motion more, to feel the textures with my hands, to colour manually with real paints, hence the idea to initiate something on those lines came to me around five years back, but it‘s only in Feb this year, I announced it. And ever since then I‘m glad to see the interest developing. What kind of work would a studio like ‘the animation garage‘ do? ‘the animation garage‘ is a full service animation studio, with the main focus on Stopmotion, muppets & puppets. But being from classical animation background I will also cater to 3D and 2D animation needs in innovative ways. Down the line, we will also cater to the special effect needs for live action films in the form of miniature sets and prosthetics.
How do you plan to generate revenue for something so different and unique? Is there enough demand in the market for such kind of work? (smiles) Interesting that you ask me that. If you look at the statistics, some of the most loved and remembered commercials are experimental. Be it ‘Gaseous Clay, Amaron or Zoo Zoo‘. So yes, the market is there. As of now we are on pre-production of ‘IPs‘ which will be executed in different styles. That will serve as our showcase to our prospective clients. You see, clients need to feel comfortable enough to execute an idea in a certain style, for example, till 1998-99; there was almost nothing in Clay, until we developed it, and since then, it has become an identity and selling point for few brands. We will be announcing a Two Month Advanced Stop-Motion Film Making Workshop which will be a Certificate program and select few students and train them in the Art of StopMotion Film Making. Why only few students? Well, Stop-Motion is a specialized field; you need to have a better understanding of timing and animation. Moreover you need to have an aptitude for that. Unlike 3D, you can‘t go back and fiddle with graphs to change animation, or change lighting and render everything again. Keeping the market balance is crucial. Our main criterion is quality and personal attention. We want to produce a few wholesome Animation Film makers and equip them
with the right skills. How do you plan to select the students? Through their portfolios, understanding of timing, acting, music and basically aesthetics. Sometimes people can‘t articulate their thoughts; hence what we‘re looking for is strong visual sense. After the initial screening, there will be a final interview. Even a fresher from 12th grade with the right aptitude can be selected. You see, to create something new you should be able to bend and break rules, unlearn things that have been fed to you since childhood. Like, we‘ve studied Film Appreciation and observed many old black and white master pieces; the Film Language was designed for audiences of that time since the medium was new. But now, audiences have matured immensely with the growth of the media and internet. Films and Music Videos of today are highly stylized, with head and tails going different ways, jump cuts, time slicing, ramping shots…but we still make sense out of it, we as an audience have evolved. So it doesn‘t matter if you know the rules, as long as what you make looks good on the screen. Do you think there should be a different category of awards for Experimental Animation? Personally, I feel it‘s just Animation like any other, all the animation principles apply. But to encourage young animators, yes why not. You recently conducted workshops at IDC and NASSCOM, how was it? I‘ve been busy in production for long, so coming back to workshops is kind of an interesting change. It‘s always fun to interact with people. Though I must agree it does gets scary when you see 70 pairs of eyes staring at you hoping you‘ll drop pearls of wisdom and you keep hoping that you tell them something fresh and new and not disappoint them, which keeps you on toes.
As they say, ‘tons of theory is an ounce of practical‘, the younger generation is well read, well informed. What they actually look for is practical experience. We can keep talking about time and spacing, but it means nothing until they do it by themselves. So in IDC, students were divided into groups based on their interests to perform different exercises, and we made almost 8 tests in different stop-motion styles including Object Animation, Pixilation, White Board Animation, Soft board Animation, Flash Light Animation etc.
The topic at NASSCOM was Experimental Animation (Going beyond standard approaches). In this 2 hour session, different styles of stop-motion film making were discussed with examples of films and we also animated objects while participants walked towards the registration counter, though they didn‘t know things were being animated around them. Elements on stage were also animated while they came inside and settled down, which were later on showed to them. We also performed a live demo of Flash Light Animation for participants and later invited them on the stage to try their hand at it, which were later showed to them.
lash Ligh ht Animation? s of Lightt Paintings that t you ma ake in thin air a with the help of a fla ash light in camera on a very slo ow shutter speed. s
Any words for aniimation asp pirants? I feel tha at animation n is a complete medium m. Usually, someone s wh ho‘s good att one art form is also a good att other art fo orms as well. For exam mple, you‘ll find f artists who w are pretty go ood musicia ans and good actors. An nimation is such s a medium that utiilizes all you ur capabilitties. It lets you y be an artist, visualiizer, musicia an, actor an nd director. And it is very satisfying. I hope people p asses ss their pote ential before e coming into i this field. The reasons should be right.. You have to t have the right aptitude, sustainable passion and a willingne ess to contriibute. I guess I‘m too young to o be giving advice, a but be passiona ate.
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