Himachal Pradesh

ANIMATION has moved way beyond traditional cartoons for child viewing.  The entire media and hobby industry is using animation techniques profusely in television channels, advertisements, web & Internet, live action movies besides fully animated movies, Which is Why animation and multimedia holds significant importance as a recession-proof, new age career option.

 Special mention must be made of the Indian animation industry as it is emerging as one of the

A Animation Movie

 most popular content markets and a global hub for outsourced projects. According to the FICCI-KPMG report, the estimated size of the Indian animation industry is around Rs 1,740crore and is expected to reach Rs 3,900 crore by 2013 with a CAGR of 17.8 per cent.

 The animation industry reported an over 200per cent increase in revenues in the past six months, as it saw a dramatic rise in content flowing in. Entertainment giants such as Walt Disney, Sony Pictures and Tumer Entertainment, which make television commercials and computer games, are off-shoring content to India.

 Says Anuj Kacker, global head, Arena Animation, “India has a great potential of talent, the only need of the hour is to groom that talent to international standards. At this juncture, it can be said that conventional career options are slowly taking a backseat. Tremendous career opportunities are opening up in this sector,” he says. There are various professional roles that an animation and multimedia professional plays in different industry segments: 

Graphic designer

He communicates visually using typography and images to present information using multimedia tools and software to create visually attractive page layouts and designs. Photoshop, Illustrator/ Coral Draw, Indesign/ Page Maker/ Quark Express & Flash are popular software. A graphic designer would use a combination of text and graphic to design logos, brochures, newsletters, posters and signs and plays a significant role in publishing houses, television channels and corporate houses. Even apparel and jewellery designing companies need graphic artists. 

Visualiser

The expert generates ideas pertaining to required text and gives a graphical presentation using software like Photoshop, Illustrator and Coral Draw. A visualiser designs magazines, cover pages, ads and newspapers and is very important in print media. 

2d animator

This role includes character design, clean up, doping, modeling, slugging and storyboarding. The animator needs to develop his skills through life drawing, composition, and perspective courses studying proportion, line of action, structure, and basic anatomy. 

 3d animator

While a 3D animator is required to do much of the 2d artist’s role he needs to deal more extensively width modeling, texturing, and lighting in 3-D environment, often with the use of such software toots and packages such as PhotoShop, Softimage, Alias/Wavefront, Maya, and Max. Skills in life drawing, concept drawing composition and character design form an integral part. 

Maya Animation with Autodesk MAYA

Storyboard artist

He interprets scripts to create story boards In layman language, a storyboard refers to the pictorial representation of script, as in the case of comic strips. This involves planning shots, visualizing the story and maintaining continuity among shots. Cutting pasting, drawing quick sketching perspective and composition, story development and interpretation forms the man job of a storyboard artist.

Layout artist

This job may be understood as that of laying or setting a stage for the animators to animate their characters and effects. It basically prepares the foundation by rendering backgrounds for each scene or sequence. For this, The artist needs to refer to storyboards. This is done width graphite pencils on punched animation paper and generally serves as a blueprint under drawing that has to be rendered in color by background painters. Interestingly, these layouts do not appear in final production and are required for positioning characters! 

Inbetweener

He helps the animator and assistants to complete the action of scene. Generally, most animation artists begin their career as an inbetweener. Infect, this serves as the most essential step in learning the basics and professional techniques of animation by taking care of transition drawings between two extreme drawings, that is, the key drawings that distill the essence of an animated action. The inbetweens fill in the action between these key drawings. 

CBT developer

Computer-based training (CBT) is a type of education wherein the learner learns by executing special training programmers on a computer. It is especially effective for training people to use computer applications as the programme can be integrated with applications so that students can practice using the application as they learn. The CBTs are often referred to as tutorials. 

Web designer

This role involves conceptualization, planning, modeling and execution, planning, modeling and execution of electronic media delivery by means of internet that is, designing a website or Internet site. These electronic files are stored in the web be server through which it can viewed as pages. The designer needs to have sound technical knowledge of multimedia software tools like graphics and animation tools, color/font selection, content creation, HTML/XML authoring, interactive items through Flash, Java Script programming, and the like. 

Special effects designer

Known as SPFX or SFX, these are used to realize scenes through use of software that can-not be achieved otherwise by live action. Special Effects artists are in great demand worldwide. A professional needs to know wide. Range of techniques over and above general multimedia tools. This includes traditional theatre effects to modern computer graphics imagery (CGI), so as to create an impressive SFX scene. 

Film editor

Film or video editing is of two types – linear and non-linear. A multimedia professional can take up the role of a film editor by training oneself with video editing tools like Avid, Final Cut Pro, Velocity and ZS4 Video Editor. 

Character designer

this individual designs or creates character and must have a clear understanding of artistic and technical considerations for practical animation as he works on paper, screen and even sculpts real objects. 

Concept artist

He make pictorial representations or visuals using natural media or digital drawing. The main focus is to visualize the director’s vision. 

Motion graphic artist

This artist’s role is to create things like titles for movies using a combination of text, image and computer generated content. 

Matte painter

He creates backgrounds that are inserted digitally using programmes like Photoshop or Painter. 

Compositor

This role involves assembling all components forming backgrounds, objects, live-action footage in layers and then best visually impressive output. 

Texture and lighting artists

This artist adds a combination of textures and lighting effects to a plain character to give it detail,

Photographs of the textures

 personality and life-like characteristics. They develop style, mood and setting. Remuneration in these fields will be in the range of Rs 12-20,000 for beginners and can go to Rs 50,000 and above a month depending upon experience. Sky is the limit for entrepreneurs! Once equipped with the right kind of training, an array of opportunities open up. Proper training and effective exposure is all that is needed.
 

 By: Puneet Sharma ( Technical adviser-animation, Arena Animation )