Press Release 2 March 2012

An enthusiastic team of artists and animators from Manipur have gathered at the Manipur Film and Development Corporation in Imphal for a three week long Animation Workshop.  They have decided to take this opportunity to develop a popular Meitei folktale for a short animation film and they are receiving support for this initiative from the Government of Art and Culture, Manipur.  As a collaborative venture with the UK based Adivasi Arts Trust, the Secretary of the Trust, Ms. Tara Douglas is attending the workshop as a resource person.  Two additional animators have also come from the National Institute of Design in Ahmadabad to help the team through the preproduction process.  Also on the team is Dr. R.K. Joykumar, the local coordinator and animation expert. 

As the workshop moves forward the designers have started visualizing the characters for the comical story based on mistaken identity and imaginary fear.  Dr. Joykumar has provided the group with references to the traditional art of the illustrated manuscripts of Manipur and in the morning session he shared his own explorations with the style.  He urged the participants to consider features such as elongated heads, long fingers, large feet and delicate profiles as seen in the traditional art. 

Meanwhile the scripting team is adapting the story for a film script where decisions need to be taken to make it concise and readable to audiences outside Manipur.  The animators have also started visualizing the scenes through the first draft of the storyboard.  In the afternoon the group was joined by guest theatre actors from the Kanglei Mime Theatre Repartory.  Arimbam Devabarta Sharma, Thakhellambam Raghumani Singh and Sorokhaibam Herojit Singh discussed the script and then went on to act out key scenes to bring the story to life for the participants, suggesting new ideas to enrich the action of the story.

The day ended with film screenings to inspire the team with a variety of techniques that have been used to create masterpieces of animation – “Neighbours” (Norman Maclaren) that uses the pixilation technique, “Walking” (Ryan Larkin), stop motion and sand animation films made by students from the National Institute of Design, and “Push comes to Shove” by Bill Plimpton.

The Advasi Arts Trust would like to thank Beeshantam Yumnam for organising the interactive session with  actors  from the Kanglei Mime Theatre Repartory.