RamMohan & Graphiti launch Animation School

5 Lifetime Achievement Awards, the latest being the V. Shantaram Award at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), inductions into the Halls of Fame of IAAFA and Communication Arts Guild (CAG), every conceivable national and international award, thousands of TV commercials and short films, social awareness projects like ‘Meena’ for UNICEF, Co-director of India’s first animation feature, ‘Ramayana – the Legend of a Prince’… Just when you thought that there was nothing new in animation for him to do, Ram Mohan has announced his latest project: A School of Animation.
According to Ram Mohan, “On the one hand, there is a big boom in the animation industry worldwide and here. On the other, the animation training/education industry is practically non-existent. Whatever education is available today seems to focus on teaching software and not on teaching animation”.
The institute is called ‘Graphiti School of Animation’ and for all practical purposes is a sibling of Graphiti Multimedia, Ram Mohan’s animation house. Admission to the one-year course offered by Graphiti School is on the basis of comprehensive Aptitude Counseling. The Counseling will help the aspiring students find out if they have the potential to excel in the profession of animation. The course itself is made up of three parts – Foundation, Specialisation and Production. In fact, for the first time, students will get an opportunity to specialise in one of the five disciplines of animation, that is, ‘Modeling’, ‘Texturing’, ‘Rigging’, ‘Animation’ and ‘Lighting & Compositing’. The course ends with two months of hands-on production experience in Graphiti Multimedia, the animation house, so that students can walk into a career as Animation Professionals.
In keeping with its philosophy of creating ‘Complete Animation Professsionals’ Graphiti School has already conducted its first workshop, ‘Writing for Animation’. It was conducted by Lisa Goodman, a New York-based animation writer, who has produced, broadcast and published several TV series and books for Columbia Tri-Star, Jumbo Pictures, Walt Disney, MGM and United Artists.
The Graphiti School course is slated to start in June, and it is bound to go a long way in creating a real solution to the dearth of animation professionals in the country.
Admissions for the course are now open and those interested in joining the course as students, or faculty, can log onto www.graphiti.net or write to training@graphiti.net for details.