NID- The National Institute of Design
NID- The National Institute of Design
It was in 1985, after a lot of research and experimentation; a two-year Advanced Entry Programme (AEP) in Animation Design was introduced at NID offering a post graduation diploma course.
Binita Desai and Nina Sabnani designed the curriculum for the same. New equipments were purchased and Prakash Moorthy, Basak Raja and Souma Bannerjee joined as first batch students. Workshops by veterans like John Ashworth and Barry Parker were conducted.
More number of students showed interest into the programme and it moved into the next decade where Shekhar Mukherjee who is current coordinator of the Animation film Design at NID joined as a student in the early 90’s.
The advent of digital technology in 90’s opened up various opportunities for the students to do internships for television channels like (Cartoon Network, MTV, Nickelodeon), gaming and other new media industries.
Vaibhav Kumaresh, E. Suresh, Arnab Chaudhary, Dhimant Vyas, Umesh Shukla being some of the champions of Indian animation produced by NID in the 90’s.
Shekhar Mukherjee has been serving the animation department at NID from 2003 till today. Since 2007, he organizes biennial International Student Animation Festival- ‘Chitrakatha’ which provide a platform to the storytellers to share their work and ideas with the world.
At present the animation enthusiasts can pursue both graduate as well as post-graduate Diploma in Design. The focus of the course is on:
• Conceptual thinking with the development of stories.
• Design Drawing
• Visualization
• Experimental Animation
• Pre-Production Techniques
• Story and Narrative
Students are geared towards acquiring professional attitude and understanding the social implication of their work.
History of NID:
The Government of India established NID in September 1961 at Ahmedabad with the assistance of Ford Foundation and the Sarabhai family.
To tackle the complex problems of the modern’s India rapidly changing environment, a multi-disciplinary approach was applied.
Communication and Industrial Design were the two main disciplines and Animation Design formed an integral part of Communication Design.
A postgraduate programme was developed offering the Visual Communication course in the early 60’s. A Swiss Animator and Graphic Designer Armin Hoffman, taught Ishu Patel and worked with five people to make the first film in 1965- Letter ‘i’ in movement. The film was made with great difficulty as the short film movement had not taken off by then and 16mm film was not easily available.
Renowned animators – John Hallas from UK; Leo Leonni and Gulio Gianini from Italy; and Norman Mclaren from Canada were called. Ishu Patel worked on a 15-minute short film– ‘Swimmy’ (first animation film of NID), based on a children’s book by Leonni. It was the first film to use Oxberry camera which was brought into NID by IS Mathur (faculty trainee) in 1965 from Bombay.
Swimmy
Image source:
http://filmsdivisionindia.tumblr.com/post/89265757699/swimmy-directors-leo-lionni-and-giulio-gianini
Charles Eames, Saul Bass and Norman McLaren helped in shaping the animation at NID by screening their works and thereby inspiring faculties and students. When Ishu Patel left NID in 1972 to join NFBC, the next generation animators RL Mistry and Narayanbhai Patel took up the responsibility. Ishu Patel made several films. ‘Bead Game’, ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Paradise’ are few of his award-winning films.
G. K. Ghokhle from Films Division used to pay a visit every month and teach them the basics of the subject. RL Mistry’s exploration on various illustration styles led him fetch the National award for his film ‘National Highway'.
An Animation Design Programme commenced in 1980 with the aim to train students to make short films relevant in entertainment, education and advertising sectors of India. G.K. Ghokhle was first faculty in this two-year programme. NID had unique facilities for animation and there were 7 trainees involved in this programme including Nina Sabnani, Chitra Sarathy and Binita Desai. With R.L Mistry as their coordinator, each of the trainees made a film and worked on group projects as well. They also underwent various workshops taken by Clair Weeks and Ishu Patel for the first two-years.
Standing: left to right- Narendra Patel, Mahendra Patel, Clair Weeks, Akhil Saxena, IS Mathur, SC Sharma, RL Mistry.
Sitting: left to right- Binita Desia, Chitra Sarathy, Nina Sabnani
Image Source: Book- ’50 Years of NID’
Then in 1984, under the aegis of the United Nations Development Programme, Binita, Chitra and Nina took up another workshop by the British animator; Roger Noake. As result several animation films came up which went on to win several accolades thus boosting the animation film training activities.
Industrial Design Centre (IDC), IIT Bombay
Industrial Design Centre (IDC), IIT Bombay
The Government of India set up IDC in 1969 in IIT, Bombay. It started with an academic programme in Industrial design. Later with the funds provided by UNDP, in 1984, IDC started a two-year masters program in Visual communication. Animation was an elective within the visual communication. Shilpa Ranade (an IDC alumnus, specialized in Visual communication) being the first animation faculty designed the complete course.
In 2006, IDC came up with a masters program in Animation. Gradually apart from Prof. Shilpa Ranade, Prof. Nina Sabnani, Prof. Phani Tetali, Prof. Sumant Rao and CP Narayan became a part of the IDC team sharing their thoughts, knowledge and philosophies with the future Indian animators.
The student coming from varied fields like engineering, art, architecture gets to learn the whole process of film making from building up a concept to the final execution. The first year being focused on the basics of animation, it’s history, principles, scripting, anatomy and drawing covering all the areas essential to nurture a complete approach to learning and understanding. Students work on their own animation films in the second year using any medium they want to work with- 2d, 3d, puppet or claymation. Some eminent animators conduct various workshops and seminars.
Many short animations dealing with a variety of subjects, experimenting with the narrative as well as the style are produced every year.
The Design Degree Show (DDS) is set up annually to showcase the work of the IDC students.
IDC aims at producing directors and creative directors, involved in creating original content in the future.
Click on the link to know the course structure:
http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/academics/animation-design-course-content.html
In mid-90’s came the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology at Bangalore, Birla Institute of Technology (Noida and Jaipur) and Zee Institute Of Creative Arts (ZICA). Later during the early 2000's, India saw a rise in the number of companies, thereby increasing the demand for manpower, which resulted in the advent of many animation institutes. Reliance AIMS, MIT Institute of Design, Whistling Woods Institute, Graphiti School of Animation, Symbiosis School of Design, Toonz Animation Academy in Trivandrum, DSK Supinfocom and many others in places like Goa, Pune, Bangalore and Kolkatta were set up.
