Winners of 24 FPS Annual International Animation Awards 2012
By Madiha Jawed
It was only last month when MAAC, one of the leaders in 3D Animation and VFX training, organised the 9th ‘24 FPS Annual International Animation Awards 2012’ in association with the UNIC (United Nations Information Centre).
This award surpassed expectations with the magnificent show that saw ‘Poised’, bag the coveted Best Animated Short Film – Gold award from MAAC’s Andheri centre in Mumbai and Best Visual Effects Short Film – Gold was won by ‘Karmchariiz’ from MAAC’s South Extension in Delhi.
MAAC Andheri Mumbai:
Having won the competition for the Best Animated Short Film has indeed done wonders to this team. Hensal D’souza, the team leader exclaimed, “Winning this competition will work as a major confidence booster. It has motivated us to work harder, enhance our creativity and achieve more success in our Animation career. We are getting offers from well known organisations and production companies and our current goal is to tap the opportunities that we are getting.”
While filming, all the four members of the team – Silu Palan, Manan Desai, Prasad Jadhav along with Hensal were pass-outs. However, the team got a lot of motivation from the faculty members of their institute. “The movie was totally done by the students but we got a great amount of guidance from our faculty members. Their experience and suggestions helped us in developing a good movie” informed Hensal.
After spending almost 6 long months on making the movie, the team did have some experiences and special instances to share with us. “The experience was fantastic and full of learning. We learned how to work as a team and how the production pipeline works in completing any movie. There is a shot in the movie where the environment scene changes from day to night as the sun goes down. Creating proper lighting result for day to night conversion took us a while,” shared Hensal. He further added, “Our short film was of 5 minutes, which is very lengthy when it comes to a student film. Completing the film within the given deadline with a good output was a big challenge and we succeeded in doing it.”
MAAC South Extension Delhi:
Pursuing BA in Animation from MAAC, all the three members of the MAAC South Extension Delhi team – Anirudh, Abhishek and Ishaan were still students while making the movie ‘Karmachariiz’ which won the best VFX Short Film award. On asking about their modus operandi for the project, Anirudh informed, “We started with writing an approach for this project. We were new to such a project so we were helped morally by our faculties. Each department was divided to individual team members as per their expertise.The project was 6 months long, out of which 2-3 months we did our technical training and the shooting part and then implemented the final output."
As for the experience he exclaimed, "It was necessary and a great experience for all of us. We came to know the exact pipeline of a VFX (Visual Effects) film. There were numerous obstructions on our way. One of them was getting permission from Delhi police to shoot at Nehru Place on a Sunday and secondly getting US military uniform for our actor to wear, we searched almost every costume shop and defense outlets in and around Delhi and there was only one outlet where we could get it at last."
Asking about their expectations and hopes of winning the competition, Anirudh said, “We should not say this but we were pretty confident when we completed the project. Our team was guided by a great teacher at our institute and we could learn a lot from him and so only executed a good result. And after all the competitors’ videos were uploaded on YouTube, we got a much clearer picture of our increased chances of winning."