Led by Father of Indian animation Ram Mohan, Mumbai based Graphiti Multimedia has shared with Animation ‘xpress its plans of launching Graphiti School of Animation this June.
The animation school will begin with one course (duration of 12 months), which will be divided into five months of foundation, five months of specialization and two months of Internship and production experience. Twenty students per batch and a total of 4 batches is what the school is planning right now for the first year.
Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, the veteran Ram Mohan shared, “Today, studios are looking for specialists. They don’t want someone who’s done just an ordinary animation course… they want someone who has mastered one of the aspects of animation production. The idea is to create a course that’s as conducive to creating industry ready professionals as possible”
“To ensure this we have structured a 12 month curriculum where the student will initially get five months of foundation where he is introduced to all aspects of animated film making and also the principles of good animation which is common to any type of animation, not necessarily only to 3D, and after that the student will specialize in one area of animation production pipeline. For eg modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting & compositing.” added Kanakasabapathy Pandyan, CEO of Graphiti School of Animation.
Further elaborating on the course, Ram Mohan shared, “Once the student has completed the foundation and specialized training, he or she will work with our senior animation professionals in our studio for two months and gain production experience. The idea is to make the student understand how an actual studio operates”
“Another big issue which we very often come across is that brilliant students from some of the more renowned animation courses in the country find it very difficult to work in a team. As part of the internship at Graphiti, we will see to it that the student understands and adapts to working with other people and also hones his coordination skills. The students will come and work with our own senior, experienced people and by the end of the course they should be able to work as professionals at a studio, with no further training, retraining or orientation required” he concluded.
Teaching and mentoring Indian animators is not something new for the veteran Ram Mohan who has been doing it for decades. On being asked as to what exactly led to the idea of formally launching the school, the stalwart shared, “It has always been my dream to start an animation school which gave the right kind of animation education. Over the past few decades, earlier at Ram Mohan Biographics and now at Graphiti we have always had a mentoring relation with the artists working here. A lot of times the artists and animators learn and get trained in a short time while working here and then move on to other studios. So we decided that let’s open a formal school where students and artists join for the purpose of learning and once they complete their course they can go and explore the available career opportunities wherever they like to”
On successful completion, the students will receive a certificate called G-CAT, Graphiti Certificate of Animation Technology. With Ram Mohan’s signature this would be their passport to a successful entry into a career in animation, anywhere in the world.
The animation school will be located on the 4th level of Udyog Bhavan, Mahim. The location which served as studio for Ram Mohan Biographics has been the hub of animation activity for nearly past 3 decades and is veritably a heritage site when it comes to Indian animation.
Graphiti moots Club 404 to get together Ram Mohan Biographics alumni
15 years ago animation wasn’t an industry in India, it was a rare art form practised by a passionate few who knew about and understood the medium. Animation then was not the lucrative career that it is today and it took real passion and guts to choose to take up animation as a full time occupation.
Founded by Ram Mohan, Ram Mohan Biographics was a pioneer in Indian animation and most of the aspiring animators found their way into RMB in their search for learning and working in animation. A great many of these are leading animation professionals today who have created a body of work as well as a name for themselves. A few of them include Suhail Merchant, Shrirang Sathaye , Sanjeev Waeerkar, Tilak Shetty, Munjal Shroff, Mandar Pingurlekar, Jeetu Patel, Vinayak Pendurkar, Ashish Khosla, Rohit Watsa, Ajit Rao, Chetan Sharma, Shilpa Ranade, Simi Nallaseth and many others.
Munjal Shroff, COO of Graphiti Multimedia said “The idea is that 404 is a landmark for almost all of us who are the second generation of Indian animation. Most of us essentially started our careers there. And today if you look at the animation industry almost everybody who is heading a studio would have at some point worked for RMB. In that sense there is a lot of nostalgia and there’s a lot of history in the place. It also therefore made sense for the schools to be started there… as it is the birth place of Indian animation…. Also what we are trying to do here is get the people back together… because there is an emotional attachment to that place” he further added.
“What we are now doing is that we are just going to start with a couple of get togethers…. There is no hard and fast rule that it is only for the people who worked there but for the 1st meeting it would be mainly for the people who started their careers there, who worked there… it’s a way of making them feel special and also it’s the people who we have worked with. I have not met them for the last 6 to 7 years. Another good way may be to document the history of animation because a lot of good work was done there… some of the work that got done there were really benchmarks, milestones in the field of Indian animation” said Ram Mohan.
“There isn’t any single point agenda for Club 404. We also have to try to make it possible for people from outside India also to participate. We will think of some web based online connectivity also as we go along. It will be a common ground for people to just interface and connect” said Tilak Shetty, CEO of Graphiti.
“In the old days there were no schools, so everyone had to learn from there. Everyone learnt together, we all evolved together. The club is also a way to show people that we may be competitors in some aspects today but when we come to 404 we are friends and old colleagues first. People used to do animation in those days purely because they enjoyed it and so we all have quite some things in common and Club 404 will be a chance to revel in that legacy” adds Tilak.