Kids admire each other?s artwork at an animation workshop. A Telegraph picture

Summer holidays are knocking on the door and with that, looming large on parents is the task of keeping their tots busy with a purpose. If packing them off to summer camps was the preferred choice so long, the new summer hotspots are animation institutes hosting workshops for kids.

?I will play with my own cartoons this summer,? announces a placard held aloft by a group of kids in a poster promoting the animation workshop of Colorchips Animation Training Centre.

?Kids watch a lot of cartoons these days and they are eager to know about how it is all done,? says Rabindra Banthia of Colorchips. ?Our workshop will enable them to have a glimpse of this magical world and actually do some of the things themselves.?

Agrees Ranjini Mukherjee of Academy of Animation Arts and Technology (AAAT): ?We saw a great response from kids and parents when we put up a stall at the Book Fair this year. We are following up that lead with the summer camps.?

The target age group for the animation workshops is between eight and 15. While Colorchips?s workshop will keep the kids engaged in animation three hours a day and three days a week for a month, AAAT is having two camps of two and three weeks? duration.

?Kids in Calcutta have a natural advantage in animation, as most of them are exposed to art very early on through drawing lessons,? feels Mukherjee.

With the entry fee pegged between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 per participant, the camps are not cost-effective for the training institutes. But it?s the chance of creating future students that the organisers are banking on. ?There is tremendous potential in this area and both children and their parents must be made aware of that,? says Banthia.

Small batches (around 10 to 20) to boost ?individual attention?, a bit of everything in the course (story-telling, flipbook, classical and digital animation), and special incentives (Colorchips is offering a CD after the course with the participant?s work in it for reviewing at home) form tools of the awareness drive.

The kids, and their parents, are not complaining.