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ShareBanglore: Life is about following your dreams, if you don't believe it, ask Seema Pillai, a Bangalore-based housewife, who always wanted to enter the field of animation and now plans to do so with a bang. Her team, Riggveda is one of the nominees for the yearly 24fps awards organised by MAAC.
The animation titled Mouse Trap is based on the theme of love and narrates the story of three rats, all friends. One of them gets abducted and the other two set out to rescue their friend. The whole animation plays out like a videogame and is three minutes-43 seconds-long.
This is the first time a Bangalore-based team has been nominated for the award, this apart from another student who was nominated as an independent entry. So what did they do to deserve this honour? "The game had a lot of detail, lot more backgrounds and some even wondered if we'll be able to finish the work on time," says Seema. "But we managed it all, two of us spent almost two months just animating the characters, Anish Ravi another team member handled the modelling and did texturing along with Vijay Kumar, who incidentally left for the US half-way through. Mukesh Jahangir handled the lighting and Yajuvendra handled rigging and helped me with animation while Jithin helped a little with everything except the lighting," she added.
The main challenge they faced while working on the animation was the time limit, both in terms of the duration of the movie as well as the time available to create it. Being their first full length animation, it took the team longer than usual to create a movie of this length, but they managed to put in one thing they always craved for...attention to detail.
"Pixar is one of my favourite studios and one thing I really liked about the movie is the mannerisms of the characters and how they have developed each and every character - not just the protagonist," Seema says.
Animation caught Seema's attention when an animated infomercial appeared on Doordarshan almost two decades ago, but since then the world of animation has added another dimension, and became a popular medium, and yet she remained a simple viewer.
All that changed a while ago when she decided to sign up for an animation course where she learnt the basics of the trade. As part of the final project, she was to be part of a team and make a full-length short animation movie. And from February to September, the team toiled and the result has earned them a spot in the finals, where they stand a chance to win not just a name, but also some fame.
She blames circumstance for her delay in entering the field. At age 38, she's older than most of her batchmates, but that hasn't affected her ambitions at all. "Given an option I would like to work with Rhythm & Hues or Paprikas, but then I also remember what a colleague of mine said. I was told that this project just might be the last time I'll be able to exhibit my creativity, they say creativity is curtailed in most animation studios, I hope that's not true," Seema added.
