Wizards of their wonderland

revelry run-up

It?s a celebration every day for these little girls of Ankuran, the kindergarten section of The Heritage School, as they rehearse on campus for a song and dance programme to mark the festival of lights, Diwali. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Welcome to the land of witches, junk-eating monsters and mad scientists. Where the jumbos and tigers are good friends. And angels take you on a tour across the globe in a few seconds.

Not on another cartoon channel. All this was possible through model animation at a recent workshop on Stop Motion Animation at Toonz Webel Academy.

Stop-motion films originated in the early 20th century. In a stop-motion film, characters, rather puppets, and sets are created, the puppets are animated and then shot frame by frame. In short, the process takes up a lot of time and effort.

It was only a few days into the workshop that Prasenjit Ganguly, visiting faculty from Toonz Animation, Thiruvananthapuram, told us that we would have to make our own stop-motion films. Screenings from Tim Burton?s Nightmare Before Christmas and Aardman Animation Films were held to gear us up for the project. But what inspired us most were the screenings of short films made by children at a workshop by Toonz Animation, Thiruvananthapuram. The concepts and characters were simple, yet awesome.

Each of the 12 teams came up with a concept for the film with Toonz Webel Academy as the theme. We then designed the characters and sets. Once the storyboards were okayed, we set forth with the production process.

A little use of imagination and the colourful puppets looked fantastic. For visual effect, we had cotton for smoke, coloured cellophanes for fire and detergent solution for bubbles.

Then, it was over to the shooting room. The lights were on and the cameras rolled. Later, as the raw footage was too long, we had to cut it down to five seconds using editing software. We added the sound, and voila! the films were ready.

The project took us six to eight days but for budding animators like us, it was an experience we would cherish.

Harshita Sharma,

3D animation diploma course,

Toonz Webel Academy

 

Steel sight

Steel manufacturing major Tisco interacted with students of IIM Calcutta in September-end and provided an insight into its corporate policies and business practices.

In a seminar titled ?Talk with Tata: Pioneers meet Excellence?, Tisco managers explained why the company is a global player in its field today.

Jasbir S. Kochar, head of human resources (flat products) at Tisco, said: ?The assignments a Tata manager deals with are challenging and dynamic. The immense opportunity to learn and harness one?s skills can allure any budding manager.?

Anand Sen, vice-president (flat products division) and alumni of IIMC, said: ?The industry realised quite late that steel was a consumer product. In order to revamp its entire retail distribution system, Tisco decided to do away with its existing distribution network and embark on a revolutionary concept called retail value management.?

Sen then described how Tata carved a niche for itself by branding its cold rolled steel products. Branding, coupled with an organised retail network, has enabled it to maintain an edge over its competitors.

M.K. Mishra, chief strategic planning and finance, and Sankalp Pratap, senior manager of that division, discussed the company?s future strategy in the wake of its recent acquisition of Singapore-based steel company NatSteel Corporation, and the company?s aggressive growth plans in Iran.

?Contrary to all beliefs, Iran is proving to be a great investment market for us. The literacy rate in Iran is one of the highest in the world, and most importantly, the country has all the three necessary ingredients for the manufacture of steel ? the second largest natural gas reserves in the world, over 2 billion tonnes of proven iron-ore reserves and its strategic location,? he said.

TISCO plans on initiating joint projects with the faculty and students of IIMC on a regular basis. The company feels it could then tap the best of passouts from the institute. At the same time, the students would get an opportunity to work with one of India?s premier business houses.

As for challenging and high-profile assignments, there is no dearth of them in Tata Steel. ?The best part is that you can even switch between functions like strategy, marketing and finance, or even between group companies,? remarked Sankalp Pratap, a 2003 IIMC batch alumni.

Biswarup Gooptu

 

Rustic touch

A three-day workshop, as part of the fifth anniversary celebrations of the Cultural and Educational Forum (CEF), a students? NGO, was held during the puja vacations at Kendur village, Burdwan.

The venue for ?Sharadiya Shamabartan 2005 ? Ebar Aalor Baan Dekechhe? was the ground adjoining Kendur High School.

Apart from a double-wicket women?s cricket match for the local residents, staging of Theatre Spandan?s Shobdogaon and a students? career camp, interesting contests on playing the drum, cooking, recitation and slow cycle race were held.

On the final day, local children and CEF members staged Chapa Pora Manush, followed by a programme of tribal songs and dance by Babulal Mandi and his troupe.

Arjun Chaudhuri,

MA, journalism & mass comm, CU