Press Release 3 March 2012


Animation film screenings are a feature at the Animation Workshop that is currently taking place at the Manipur Film Development Corporation.  These screenings have a difference however:  Participants are finding out about animation done by minority communities in countries such as Finland and Estonia, and by dedicated individuals that cannot help themselves but bring all kinds of materials to life.  Animation is an incredibly time consuming process, a  reason that it gets farmed out from the West to countries such as India where the hourly rate is considerably lower.  The 23 participants of the workshop are from the Meitei community and they are interested in developing an alternative to the standard commercial animation that they have been exposed to by finding an artistic style of their own in the animation medium, and they are investigating the  ancient illustrated manuscripts from their own tradition for ideas.

Senior artist and teacher, Dr. R.K. Joykumar is supervising the design team. “This is the first workshop like this.   I have two expectations:  One thing is the introduction of the internal mechanics for those that are newcomers and the second is the exploration of possibilities with regard to creativity with right guidance from the resource persons.  We are doing something experimental, we don’t need to look for new materials we can go for traditional things too.  We are looking for a medium with which we are quite familiar”, he explains. 

In the afternoon a storyboard discussion was organised by two visiting animators, Sephin Alexander and Rahul Laishram,  from the National Institute of Design in Ahmadabad.   At their institute emphasis is placed on pre-production and story development for the audio visual medium.  The two animators have been working on the first draft storyboard for a folktale chosen by the group for their animation film.  They point out that while there is always a temptation to go straight into animation, a well planned storyboard is essential to any production; It is in the storyboard that the main visual elements and actions from the story are identified and communicated, with the focus also on continuity in the sequence of shots.   

Tara Douglas from the UK based Adivasi Arts Trust has also joined the workshop as a resource person.  She is researching the art and culture of tribal communities in India to find out if it can provide original content for animation and revitalize the local communities too.