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.