Interface Awards was held on 13th Nov ’10, presented by Arena Chowringhee.

This year 2010 was the most extravagance year for showcasing the best performance by the students of Arena Animation Chowringhee at Vidya mandir on 13 november in the presence of students, their family and team members of Arena chowringhee.

This year we had our centre director Mr.H.S. Azad on the stage speaking about the establishment of this institution . How by every brick to brick construction had been made this arena chowringhee the best voted animation centre in the eastern zone for the last 12 years . He spoke about the hard work involved behind this whole scenario for upbringing of this institution and the whole trade also included the priceless effort of Mr. A.D. Singh who has given his life’s 12 years to make it stand.

Mr A.D. Singh , our centre head of chowringee also spoke a few words that how his enthusiasm grows with success of every student. He really cherished the moment when Mr. Rizwanur Rahman used to be the part of this institution, but even now the whole team of chowringhee and the devoted students do keep him alive in their thoughts.

The evening’s atmosphere lighted up with the performance of the students dance on classical numbers and heart throbbing melodious songs of Rabindranath Tagore and enthusiastically it was enjoyed by the over all audience.

This year we had several awards to bring up the gusto of our students and again they proved themselves to be the best by bagging all the awards in almost all categories. This year we had best 2D illustration , best 3D illustration with character design of the epics of Mahabharata. Then it was followed by the award for the best Comics where the students gave in there passion for work to bring out the real effect of hardwork with a little spice of their creativity. This year also the most awaited award was our Mr. and Ms. Arena 2010, where all the students where pounding on their heart to know the results of achiever and which finally came out with a thrill.
The show continued to very whelming with dance performers who gave it a new twist. This time Arena Chowringhee presented a mixer of the western mode and eastern earnest of the dance performances , where all the students have given their months of efforts to make it a big success. Eventually the evening came in with more surprises comprising of a drama which made the audience laugh their heart out.
Then it was the time for our eminent faculties to come up on the stage for their hard work in upbringing the institute. It was rather followed by our administration department and the coworkers on the floor.



The magical night comes to an end with a earnest thanks giving to our chief guest, Ms Rupanjana Mitra and the parents who drastically proved to be the real people to be privileged for this immemorable smaching night. We also imparted our special thanks to our jury and co sponsors - Keventer Agro, Frooti, Metro Diary, Animation Express, Official Radio Partner Power 107.8 F.M, Platinum Sponsor Glaamour, LG, GD Group, Printdesk, Millenium constructions, Chabria, Hi Tech engineers. We warm heartedly imparted our special token of thanks to Mr. H.S. Azad and Mr. A.D. Singh to put up the beautiful night with the excellent shows. This thing again showed the efficiency of the students and team members regarding the togetherness and jeal to prove this arena chowringhee to be the best voted centre of the Eastern India. The night mop up with a sublime eagerness and promise to be back again with a blast to create a new bench mark.

‘ARTHUR’S ADDA’ – THINKING OUT OF THE BOX WORKSHOP @ ARENA ANIMATION CHOWRINGHEE

Graphic design & advertisement can also be termed as a blend of artistic and professional disciplines that focuses on visual communication and presentation. The field as a whole is also often referred to as Visual Communication or Communication Design. The workshop named ‘Arthur’s Adda’ was held on 24th July 2010 by the famous advertising professional & workshop Guru- Mr. Arthur Cardozo and Mr. Subrata Bhowmick- who has been working as an Art Director for the past 35 years in this field .

A huge number of students gathered here to participate in the interactive workshop which focused on brainstorming the students. To become a good advertising professional one needs to develop his creativity level, idea generating skill, innovative thinking, the way to represent himself, sell that particular brand, hard work, personal commitment and at last but not the least a good team worker.

Mr. Cardozo got the students involved a few exercises which aimed at developing the creativity of the students.

In the first process, everyone present in that seminar were asked to think about ideas regarding ads. Participants came up with various concepts as well as ideas of ads.

Then the second process involved of creating a personalized logo of each student. Students were asked to make the logo of the first letter of their name. Students got very innovative designs and we got some impressive output from them.

Arthur also described that creativity can not be defined in a single word. It is totally depends on one’s perception. A few phases are involved in making an ad. These are –

Idea generation – an initial way to communicate in different thinking.
Execution – To elaborate the idea in a transparent way.
Promotion – To launch those ideas through media.


Arthur showed a few international ads to the students which were a blend of some extraordinary concepts. Students were extremely excited to watch all of them and came up with some various questions.After that he gave home work to each student i.e. to make the logo of ‘ANMOL’ from their own creative ideas. Students were asked to send that work within a week.

After this fabulous session of Arthur, Mr. Bhowmick came up with a few awesome concepts regarding advertisements. He emphasized on the various topics of ads and students got some valuable ads to observe.

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 June ’10 was bagged by Mr. Utpal Nandi. The ‘Academic performer of the Month’ for June ’10 was awarded to Pallabi Nandi. The closing speech was elated by Mr. A. D Singh, our Centre Head, during which he emphasized on participation in contests without thinking about the outcome. According to him, participation makes an individual judge his own standard of work and gives a scope to an individual to improve his work.

CHARACTER ANIMATION IN FLASH

Animation can be created by using many different mediums. One of the most common and popularly used medium is creating an animation using Flash. To enhance student’s knowledge and to make the students well versed with the current market needs Arena Animation Chowringhee organized a three day workshop on Character Animation in Flash from 26th April to 29th April ’10 at Arena Chowringheee.

This workshop was conducted by a very famous personality from the animation industry named Mr. Santosh Sawant currently working as Creative Director with Phoebus Media Pvt. Ltd.

There were 20 students who participated in this workshop. This was done by organizing a test for all students where they had to create a character in flash and out of which only best twenty were selected.

The workshop aimed at explaining the students the process of animation in Flash. They were also given not only theoretical knowledge but also had to go through a lot of brainstorming sessions.

Day 1
The first day Mr. Sawant gave an introduction to the students as to how to create an animation in Flash and explaining the animation principles to them. He also explained as to how it could be used in a commercial way and what the future prospects are.

Day 2
This day students were given assignments on walk cycles and run cycles. Students were very enthusiastic while working on these assignments. Everyone had to create a walk cycle for their character in Flash. This was done to give practical knowledge to the students about what they had learnt on the first day.

Day 3
These day students had to create a story board for a short film that the students would be making. There were five groups each group consisting of 4 students in a group. The storyboard was planned for the film which would be finally executed in Flash.

Finally after the completion of the workshop the students had created a Generic Model in Flash.

We got a tremendous response from the students. They participated in the workshop with immense enthusiasm and zeal. Students created the storyboard and now are on the process of creation of a short film in Flash.

Adobe Flash on Mobile Devices

Arena Animation Chowringhee had organized a workshop on Flash Mobile Technology by an eminent person Mr. Rajdeep Rath on 6th March 2010. Mr. Rath is the Group Manager of Adobe Flash Lite Community for the Eastern Zone, with a work experience of more than 5 years as Senior Flash Programmer with reputed organization.

The subject was "Flash Platform on Mobile Devices". This was also his the first Flash Platform seminar in Kolkata covering the various aspects of Flash, including the Flash mobile platform. The 2 Hours free seminar, consisted of :

o Introduction to Flash Platform

o A brief history to "How and why Flash made it this far - smart vector graphics"

o A treat for the eyes - "Augmented Reality demostration from ge.ecomagination.com"

o About the Open Screen Project

1. Videos from Vimeo.com

2. Adobe's commitment to mobile market

3. The Open Screen Project partners

o Flash Player Runtime - (Flash Lite and Flash Player 10.1)

o Introduction to Adobe Device Central

o Hands-on building simple mobile content in Adobe Flash Cs3 on Adobe Device Central.

o Demos of pre-built Flash Lite content (wallpaper,screensaver,game)

o Awareness of existing market of Flash Lite.

o About Flash Lite supported phones in the market.

o Flash Player 10.1 - Desktop to mobile transition.

o Videos From various sources on Flash content:

o Flash Player 10.1 on Nexus one.

o Flash Player 10.1 and Motorola.

o 3D on mobile platform and Flash Player 10.1.

o Beating the barriers - Flash on iPhone and iPad.

o A wrap up with brief on Flex and AIR and how they will be participants in the Flash mobile revolution.

o A Demo of the "Flex Store" application.

The workshop was attended by most of the students. The students were full of enthusiasm and they infact learnt a great deal from this workshop. Students had requested for some more workshops of these kind.

Character Design and Concept Art

Arena Animation Chowringhee took a step forward towards giving their students an idea as to how to design a character in accordance to the script of making a good animation film. This was done by organizing a Five day from 16th – 22nd February ‘10 workshop on Character Design and Concept Art by Mr. Ritabrata Joardar.

Mr Ritabrata Joardar was previously with Greengold Animation as Animation Supervisor and Pre Production Artist for Krishna and Chota Bheem. He also worked as a lead Character Designer in UTV Motion Pictures and Prime Focus. He also worked as pre production artist for other studios like Mel and Red Chillies.

There were 20 students who participated in this workshop. This was done by organizing a test for all students and out of which only best twenty were selected.

Being a five day workshop the main aim was to teach the students as to how to create the character after getting the script.

Day1: The first day students were taught that how essential to make notes for that character and for that there has to be a detailed and a very strong script.

Day 2: The second day involved as to how to develop the character in accordance to the script. For that there has to be some amount of Research and Development too. Some important references are required to be taken and how we should do the Doodling of the script. It was very interactive workshop and students had to go through a lot of brainstorming sessions. The next step would involve as to how to scribble the character and how to come into details from various stages to the final character

Day 3: This involved how to make turn around of that character and also the expressions and different gestures of that character. The students were asked to create the expressions chart which involved portraying of different gestures like lip movement.

Day 4: The fourth day was to teach the student of Concept Art. The students had to create an image out of their imagination. Students were asked to create different images according to their script.

Day 5: The final day consisted of how to paint the character or layout digitally. Students had to finalize and complete their characters on the final day.

This being an interactive workshop, students participated with full enthusiasm. They got a flavor as to how the pre production work is done in the animation industry under the guidance of an expert from the same field.

Creative Minds and Creative Guru 2010

A step was taken towards focusing and improvising the professional skills of the students which are required in today’s animation industry by Aptech Limited. This was done by a competition called Creative Minds 2010 which was held on Saturday 6th February 2010 at Vidya Mandir. All centers of the eastern zone participated in this competition which was held on a grand scale.

There were various categories for the competition and students had to follow certain guidelines for it. The categories were as follows – 2D Cartooning, 3D Modeling, Stop Motion Animation, 2D Short Film and 3D Short Film .Most of the entries were from arena Animation Chowringhee.

The works of the students were evaluated by a prestigious jury which comprised of PROF. R. L. MISTRY (ex-NID)Consultant-Communication Design and Visiting faculty-Animation and Graphics , Mr. Sekhar Mukherjee is presently the Senior Associate Faculty & Coordinator of Animation Film Design at NID , MR. YUNUS BUKHARI – VFX Supervisor & Creative Director and Founder, Artery Animation & Fx, Mumbai , Ranjit Singh (Tony) Co-promoter and present Honorary Secretary of The Animation Society of India – TASI and BITHIN DAS Creative Head of Sahara Samay.
There was huge student participation from our centre and most of the students gathered there to cheer their fellow mates whose works were selected for the competition. Around Nine entries were selected for the 2D Cartooning category, four for the 3D Modeling Category, Two for the stop Motion Category, Three for 2D Short Film and Two for 3D Short Film which was the highest from any other centre.

Mr. Shekhar Mukherjee appreciated the work of our student Sweta Jaiswal which was categorized undr Stop Motion Animation called Divinity, The Hope Of Life. All the Jury members pleased to see the 2D Short Film – Super Hero by Amrit Tigga , Sampa Kundu , Arindam Mondal and Sk Abul Fazl . there was huge appreciation in the crowd when the film was shown during the programme.



We are proud to announce that our student Anupam Sardar was awarded as the 1st Runner Up of the 3D Modeling category and in the 2nd Runner Up for 3D Short Film was awarded to the film called Reflection by Anupam Sardar , Soumendranath Patra , Rajib Pal and Sweta Roy Chowdhury.


This event was followed by Faculty Competition of the Eastern zone called Creative Guru 2010. This was organized for the 1st time. The jury comprised of R. L. MISTRY (ex-NID) Consultant-Communication Design and Visiting faculty-Animation and Graphics, Mr. Sekhar Mukherjee is presently the Senior Associate Faculty & Coordinator of Animation Film Design at NID, MR. YUNUS BUKHARI – VFX Supervisor & Creative Director and Founder, Artery Animation & Fx, Mumbai.
We are proud to announce that we made a clen sweep by winning both the awards of the Faculty Short Film. Mr Indranil Ghosh’s Docomo was the Winner of the Best Short Film and Mr Indranil Ghosh and Mr Biplab Dey Utsab was 1st Runner Up in this category.

By participating and winning Creative Minds and Creative Guru we aim at enhancing the student and faculty skills for today’s animation industry. We would continue to participate in such competitions and improve the quality even more.