WORKSHOP ON ADVERTISING AND COMMUNICATION

Ideas are more important than learning the tools in software. A good advertisement can only be created with innovative ideas. This was the primary topic for the workshop held on 19th December 09 at the Conference room of Academy of Fine Arts. This workshop was conducted by the famous advertising professional - Mr. Arthur Cardozo.

The event witnessed huge crowd of students to attend and participate in interactive workshop which focused on brainstorming of the students. To become an advertising professional one has to portray creativity, appeal factor, idea generation skills, innovative thinking capability, zeal to present, sell a point and last but not the least, to perform as a team member.

According to Arthur, this workshop involved few brainstorming exercises.

LET’S PLAY! Because that is what this profession is about - Fun! – Arthur started. Everyone present in the room was asked to close their eyes for two minutes. After this they were asked to explain what they have visualized. The participants came up with interesting concepts and ideas.

Then the second process involved of creating a calendar with a creative caricature. Students got very innovative ideas and we got some impressive outputs from the students.

Arthur also emphasized that one cannot define creativity. It is right brain dominant and it totally depends on one’s perception. There are certain steps involved in creating an ad. They are:

• Ideation – Simple, easy to communicate and differential thinking.
• Execution – clear imagination, resource and no compromise.
• Ambient Media – finding the touch point and innovative and creative devices.

Arthur showcased some interesting international advertisements which involved exceptional creative concepts. To sum up he gave the students ten ideas to boost their creativity. These were – listening to music, brainstorming, taking notes, referring dictionary, defining problem, to take walks while thinking, avoid television, avoid drugs, be yourself, reading and finally exercise your brain.

The session concluded with the prize distribution for the ‘Arenite of the Month’ and the ‘Academic performer of the month’. The ‘Arenite of the Month’ for November ’09 was bagged by Mr. Sandip Routh. The ‘Academic performer of the Month’ for November’09 was awarded to Rajarshi Mukherjee, Anwesh Banerjee and Debanjan Mitra. The closing speech was elated by Mr. A. D Singh, our Centre Head, during which he emphasized on participation in contests by thinking without the outcome. According to him, participation makes individual assess his own standard of work and gives an insight to an individual to improve on their faults.

Post Editorial Coverage of Arena Chowringhee Interface Awards 09

Year 2009 once again saw Arena Animation Chowringhee showcasing the creative talents of their students at Vidya Mandir on 21st November in presence of the eminent guests such as Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly, Mr.Sarbajit Sen and Mr.Arthur Cardozo from the animation fraternity.

Mr Prosenjit Ganguly- an independent animation design professional, an alumnus and former member of the faculty of National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad inspired the budding animators by speaking about the meaning, the process and the stages of animation development. He spoke about the importance of story, research, concept and the visualization that goes behind making an animation film.He also illustrated how passion as an ingredient can act as a catalyst in the process that translates ones thoughts and ideas into the output of animation. He encouraged parents to urge their children to initiate the process of telling stories in order to improve their skills.


Mr. Sarabjit Sen , a cartoonist grown up in the city of Kolkata having an unmistakable Indian flavor of his comic strips, cartoons, illustrations and even children’s books spoke briefly on the subject of graphic novels and complimented the students for their effort and their hard work. The objective of bringing out the excellence from the budding animators has been the exclusive culture of Arena Animation Chowringhee under the guidance and competent leadership of Mr.A.D.Singh.

The program which followed drew a lot of appreciation from the audience started with a series of cultural events comprising of the inaugural Rabindra Sangeet followed by dance recital-Saraswati Vandana.




Speaking on the occasion the Center Director Mr. A.D.Singh said : “It is here in this city when we started in 1997and since then we have grown by leaps and bounds and this has been only possible with the response of the creative people of Kolkata. Our center has been nominated for awards and accolades not only within India but also internationally. Recently three of our students have been selected as the winning team to represent India in the final competition of the Panorama Asia Pacific Animation Design Challenge 2009 sponsored by Autodesk to be held in Hongkong from 10th -15th Dec 2009 for their short film titled “Save the World”. This year we have added 3 major feathers to our cap -: firstly by launching the B.Sc degree in Animation in association with MS University. Secondly we have become an Adobe certified testing center whereby students can become Adobe certified in different technologies and thirdly we are in the process of expanding from a 5000 sq ft to a 10000 sq foot capacity to accommodate their even increasing capacity of more than 800 students.”

The Interface Awards was based on a series of competitions which were held in the centre. The students have worked extremely hard and to submit their entries. The various categories were as follows: 2D Illustration Art , 3D Illustration Art , Graphic Novel, Public Service Announcement (PSA) and Website Designing. The judges for these categories were Mr. Yunus Bukhari – Visual Effects Producer, Artery & SFX, Mr. Sanjay Pandey– a film maker and Mr. Puneet Sharma – Technical Advisor - Aptech Arena

The event also had the short film competition called Chalochobbi Awards which has a Viewer’s Choice Award. The results were as follows:

Winner was Super Hero by Amrit Tigga , Sampa Kundu , Arindam Mondal and Sk Abul Fazal.
First Runner Up were: Rikshawala by Sayani Majunder , Saheli Bakshi and Deepika Tamang

Along with the Award ceremony there were a lot of cultural events for which the students had practiced a lot to put up an excellent show. It once again established a great team spirit and togetherness which yield a high degree of efficiency and productivity which again proves that Arena Chowringhee has created a firm foothold in this highly competitive animation education industry.

A 5-Day Workshop by Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly or PJ

It was a workshop taken by none other than Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly.It was a five day affair at the centre where in 30 students had participated. This seminar was worth to be a part of. Not only the students took back technical knowledge with them but they were also enriched with professionalism,positive attitude which happens to be the main criteria behind being successful in any existing industry.

Before starting the workshop he had divided the batch into 11 groups which consisted of students from the DAE and AAASP course.They had 5 DAE groups and 6 AAASP groups.

Day 1- PJ started with an Introductory speech where in he mentioned about how to make good films. This was followed by films which were showed to students like Oktapody and Overtime. Thereafter he spoke about pitching, Criterias on pitching, the preparations made or taken for pitching.

We had students who pitched in to give their inputs on the concepts of pitching.
Finally he concluded by merging all inputs and modifying their pitching.

After discussing about pitching, PJ spoke about thumbnailing. He showed them how to thumbnail stories. He adviced the students to thumbnail their thoughts. Hence the first step of thumbnailing was done.

He also touched the basics of character definition.

Day 2- The second day started with Sketching sessions. According to him there should be 15 mins of sketching practice in every class.

Then he was the model himself for Gesture Sketching. He spoke about the importance of Gesture Sketching, the methods of Gesture Sketching.

He spoke about the Making of Oktapody, Pirates.

He made correction and modified the thumbnailing and character definition.

Day 3- The third day also started with sketching, followed by thumbnailing and character making.

PJ then discussed different form of Arts. He asked students to make treatment sheets.
He introduced stylization to the students which was followed by screening of 2D and 3D films.

All this was followed by initialization of storyboarding where in PJ himself rectified for students individually on the board.

Day 4- Sketching was the first thing they started on the fourth day which was followed by showing different stylization by him. He then discussed how to fix your own stylization. They were made to use raw materials to make their treatment sheet. After thumbnailing and character designing the students started with their storyboarding.

Day 5- On the fifth day we had the seminar on Film Making in Academy of Fine Arts after which those 30 students went back to the centre to finish their incomplete work.On the last day PJ gave his last bit of suggestions to the students to complete their films.
In all there were 11 films in progress by the students. The faculty members were asked to overview their works and once completed these films would be sent to Mr.Prosenjit Ganguly.

Hence this was what covered in the 5 day workshop that he had with the students.
We are confident that the students graduating from this workshop would definitely be enriched with knowledge different from the rest. We wish them the very best in future and hope their films come out in flying colours.

Seminar by the one and only Prosenjit Ganguly.

The Seminar on the 7th of August was one of its kind as we all know the main attraction of it was none other than Mr. Proshenjit Ganguli or rather PJ as he is better known. He is a man who basically needs no introduction-an independent film-maker, a former Director of Special Projects-The Toonz Animation Trivandrum and a National Institute of Design alumnus along with being a former member of faculty.

It was an honour and privilege to be able to host this seminar which was on Animation and Film Making taking a queue from the last seminar in St. Xavier’s Auditorium which turned out to be a grand success and we were equally confident that this seminar would also follow the same footsteps and so it did.

We had basically divided the Seminar into three parts. We declared the morning open by a warm welcome to the students followed by the first part of the event-the screening of the Chalochhobi I films. We had 8 films in all to be screened against which only one was awarded the best Viewers Choice Awards. The students were distributed voting forms and made to vote after all 8 films were screened. The maximum number of votes went to a film called Chalochhobi made by our DAE students Sanchari Chatterji and Somen Chatterjee. After the voting the students dropped their votes in the ballot box which in turn was emptied and the counting started.

During this period we moved on to our next and the main attraction of the seminar. Mr Proshenjit Ganguli took over. It was really a pleasure hearing him for the next 2 hrs at a stretch. There was pin drop silence in the hall. He had no materials, no laptop, and no slides to show to the students. He only had his knowledge, his experience to share with us. His Gift of The Gab alarmed the student’s majorly. He had his own style to get the right things across to the students. He spoke on different aspects on Film Making, What it takes to be a successful Film-Maker, the journey, the efforts, the hard-work, the love for the job.
The students were highly motivated, inspired by the whole seminar. They went back on a good note.

After his session, we moved on to the awards giving ceremony, where Mr A.D.Singh and Mr.Proshenjit Ganguli gave away the awards and certificates for the Chalochhobi I and the Rizwanur Rahman Creative Awards.

The event ended on a very positive note.

We take pride in being one of the leading Animation Institutes and we sincerely hope that our students will continue to excel in their chosen field of work and carry forward our flag always.

The Seminar on the launching of the InterFace Competion

7th July 2009
2.00pm-5.00pm

The InterFace and Cholochhobi Awards 2009 of Arena Animation Chowringhee is aimed at encouraging each and every student to come forth and participate in order to project their best efforts in the fields of Multimedia and Animation. The essence, through speech and visuals, will be to bring to te forefront the ability of the students and advising them to use the competition as a platform to hone their skills and gain in confidence.

One of the main purposes of any competition is not only winning but also the spirit of participation. This was amply displayed in the Seminar on the launching of the Interface Competition through various aspects.

The Seminar as we all know was held in St.Xavier’s Auditorium in Park Street,
, Kolkata.
It started at 2.00pm in the afternoon and lasted till 5.00pm in the evening.
We had over 250 students attending the Seminar in spite of the fact that the weather was going against the event.

We reached the venue by 12.30pm to get things organized in order to be bang on time. However, we had students as volunteers to manage the hall in time of entry.

We also had a registration desk, just outside the hall where we got the students to register their names before entering.The Registration desk was very well managed by our own Academics in Charge-Mrs. Shalu Kaur and our Librarian Mrs. Sumita Dutta.

The event started at 2.15pm sharp. The afternoon was declared open by our Centre Head-Director Mr. A. D. Singh who briefed the students of the competition and their categories. Needless to say that the students were hugely motivated by his opening speech and their interest and curiosity rose to a different level to know more about the forthcoming competition.

We had 5 categories to introduce in the first half. These were 2D Illustration, Graphic Novels, Website Designing, 3D Illustration and PSA. Our respected faculties were asked to come and give presentations of each category to help the students to understand them better.

We had a 15 mins break in between which was covered by a round of question answer round conducted by one of our respected faculty.

Followed were the next part of the Seminar which was the Cholochhobi 2nd Edition. Here the students were shown films by the faculties.

The students were briefed about the entire procedure of taking part in the competition which would start from the month of July and continue till November.

The event was a major success and the efforts put in by one and all were appreciated by all students. This event was first of its kind organized in this manner by Arena Animation Chowringhee.

We, Arena Animation wish each of our students the very best for this mega competition. Hope each one of them come out with flying colors.

Pitching and Film Making

What is A Film? For a film : we require a story – it can be defined as any sequence of events with a beginning, middle, and an end makes up a story, but it would not be a very interesting story unless it had a dramatic twist of some sort so the end could not be anticipated. If it is sad, then the story is a tragedy. If it is happy then the story is a comedy. A 'dramatic twist' is a point where the storyline takes an unexpected turn, and the reader is not sure what is going to happen next.
The workshop aimed on giving a professional flavor to the students on the Pre production of Film Making ? Our session was conducted by eminent animation mentors who gave in their experience on Film Making. This workshop was divided into two sessions – Story and Concept and Pitching. It was held on 4th and 10th April 2009 respectively, in the conference Room of Academy of Fine Arts .

To begin with, it was Mr. Biplab Chandra first showcased some 2D short films. He explained as to what is a story. As explained earlier the story should have a beginning, middle and an end. He explained the concept with the examples and also with a simple diagrammatic structure.

Storyline 1
I was about to make a cup of tea when I realised I had run out of milk. Still being in my dressing gown, I could not go out to buy any, so I went to my neighbour in the next apartment and knocked on the door. He came and gave me some milk. I returned and had a cup of tea.

This is a story, but not a very interesting one. It has a beginning with the objective of my wanting a cup of tea. It has a slight dramatic turn in the middle when I discover I have no milk and have to take action to resolve it. It ends when I get the milk, and then make my tea.

Storyline 2
I was about to make a cup of tea when I realised I had run out of milk. Still being in my dressing gown, I could not go out to buy any, so I went to my neighbour in the next apartment and knocked on the door. I could hear violent noises in the apartment, but no one came. I knocked again. A total stranger opened the door. He asked me abruptly what I wanted, I asked if my neighbour was in, and that I had run out of milk .The stranger said my friend had gone away and that he was looking after the flat, and that he didn't have any milk. He then slammed the door.
This story creates another line of thought. It has the same beginning of my wanting a cup of tea. It has the same twist where I have to go to my neighbor to get some milk, but there is a new dramatic turn when the stranger comes to the door and acts in an unfriendly way. The story cannot end there. It would not be satisfying to say "I then went to another neighbor and got some milk" because the reader is more interested in who the stranger was.

The story line can be developed visually:

This diagram simply tells you that the situation needs to be resolved, and that action has to be taken to resolve it. But there is a 'Decision' stage in between the Situation and the Action.

The 'Decision' stage is very important, as there may be various options that are available, and they come before the decision to take action. The diagram can now be expanded.

So, the story starts out with the objective my wanting to get some milk, but then the objective changes to my wanting to find out what happened to my neighbour. A good story has many dramatic twists and turns, and often has 'counterpoint' stories going on at the same time.
The storyline could end with borrowing milk from my neighbour, but as there seems to be something odd going on, the storyline changes and becomes:

The 'end action' of the first sequence becomes the starting situation of the second sequence.

Similarly Mr Biplab Chandra also explained the classic story structure which begins with the plot. What do we mean by Plot? Simply, plot is WHAT HAPPENS in a short story, novel, play or film. No more, no less. It isn't description or dialogue, and it certainly isn't theme. In the best stories, plot grows organically out of character, rather than being imposed from above. Mr. Biplab pointed out how writers could develop the plot – as pointed out by Anne Lamott ('Bird by Bird,' 'Operating Instructions') created a mnemonic device to help writers remember how to write plots that work:

Action, Background, Conflict, Development and End. Mr Dhurobojyoti Chatterjee also contributed in this workshop. His area dealt with the interesting characters that are required to enhance the story. The characters in the story play a very significant role. The characters should also be created in such a manner one look at them can actually describe their inner self.

He showed us a lot of examples from movies like Lion King, Madagascar and many more.
The workshop was highly interactive and we could see the interest within the students. Certain scenes from good animation films were showcased to explain the concept of a good story and plot.

The second session of the workshop was based on Pitching. Pitching is a very important part before we begin with the production. It involves telling of the story in a convincing tone within a specified time period. Its as if one is selling the story to the client. Once the narration is over the narrator cannot argue defend his or herself while taking suggestions from the client.
This was a new experience for the students and definitely our aim was to give the students a professional flavor of the animation industry.

The pitching session was judged by our eminent panel of judges which included an eminent comic strip artist Mr Sarabjit , Mr Sumit Ghosh along with the 2D and 3D mentors and also the fellow students.
The session turned out to be extremely exciting and vibrant when the students pitched their story and also took suggestions from the Judges.
Eventually we completed with the Pre production part of Film Making. It was an important step towards giving a professional flavor of an Animation Film Making.
The workshop concluded with the prize distribution of Arenite and Academic Performer for the Month of February and March. 09. Student: Arunava Roy Chowdhury and Subhamoy Mukherjee were awarded as the Arenite of the month for February and March respectively. Rajib Pal and Soumendranth Patra was awarded as academic performer for the month of February and March respectively

Arthur’s Advertising Adda

Concept based knowledge is more important than the tool based knowledge . Everyone is creative but the creativity needs to be enhanced. These were the main criteria for our workshop which was held on Saturday 7th March 09 at the Conference Room of Academy of Fine Arts. This workshop was conducted by a very famous Advertising Professional Mr Arthur Cardozo. We also had two guest speakers with us Mr Sudarshan Ray and Mr Arjun Mukherjee who eminent creative directors.

It was an extremely interactive session. Mr Sudarshan talked about diffenent kind of Advertisements. He asserted on the fact that before we think of creating any ad we ahould first understand the product and its potential customers. There were number of examples given like for Tripti Mustard Oil, Lux beauty soap and many more . He also pointed out if one wants to create an ad before he starts working on the computer he has to first work on paper.

Mr Arjun Mukherjee emphasized on the idea and meaning behind any advertisement. He said it is essential to create a meaning behind an ad so that our potential customers can relate to it. Some of his works were displayed which was appreciated by all.

Being an interactive session Arthur Cardozo made the students do some brainstorming exercises. Everyone present in the room was told to close their eyes for two minutes. After this they were asked to explain as to what they had visualized. We got very interesting answers. The entire atmosphere lightened up with the cheers of students when Arthur asked them to change their seats.

Arthur also emphasized that one cannot define creativity. It is right brain dominant and it totally depends on ones perception. What you perceive and what others perceive. There are certain steps involved in creating an ad. They are – Ideation – Simple, easy to communicate and differential thinking. Execution – clear imagination, resource and no compromise. Ambient Media – finding the touch point and innovative and creative devices.

Arthur showed some good international advertisements which were had involved good creative concept. To sum up he gave the students ten ideas to boost your creativity.
These steps were – listen to music , brainstorm , always carry notebooks, if we are stuck for an idea open the dictionary, define your problem , if you cannot think go for a walk, don’t watch television , don’t do drugs – be yourself, read as much as you can and finally exercise your brain. .

This session involved lot thinking and how one can enhance an individual’s creativity.

The session ended with the prize distribution for the Arenite of the Month and the Academic Performer for the month. The Arenite of the Month was given to Anil Kumar for the month of December and Bitan De for the month of January 09. The Academic Performer of the Month was awarded to Varsha Jain for December 08 and Amisha Verma for January 09. The closing speech was given by Mr . A. D Singh , our Centre Head, in which he emphasized on participation in contests without thinking of the outcome. According to him participation makes individual asses his standard of work and gives an insight to an individual to improve on the faults.