The power of storytelling

These days, we often hear about individuals taking the path less trodden and making a success of it. But for Suresh Eriyat, the founder and creative director of Eeksaurus, a renowned animation studio in Mumbai, this journey started ages ago. Initially besotted with the IITs, it was Eriyat’s father who encouraged him to go beyond the usual path and explore his creativity to its fullest potential. Getting admitted into National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and years of hard work later, Eriyat seems to have fulfilled his destiny.

Animation’s topmost honour
One of his studio’s most recent achievements has been that of winning the Annecy Cristal Award in the Commissioned Film Category for their film Fateline on child labour, for Rotary International. For the uninitiated, Annecy is the world’s oldest, largest and most prestigious animation film festival. Eriyat recalls, “While we had been nominated seven times in the past ten years, which we consider an honour by itself, we went there once again not expecting to win. However, when our name was announced, the moment felt surreal.” The campaign was based on the concept of a young child labourer determined to break free from the bonds that held him down. “The jury at Annecy was mighty impressed with the campaign calling it a film that was a fantastic mix of technique and aesthetics, a kind they had never seen before,” adds Eriyat. What’s more, this is the first time that any ad campaign or any animation film entry from India has ever won at this prestigious festival.

The success mantra
When asked what makes his work—the clay animation ad he created for Amaron Battery or the Google Tanjore and ICICI Chintamani ads—memorable, Eriyat responds, “Since the time I started Famous House of Animation in collaboration with Famous Studios, I believed in doing justice to the story first and make it unique by the way it is told. Clay animation is not my invention. It already existed in the West. With our education at NID, we had an early exposure to various media and of course, design-driven thinking.” Sadly, successes tend to typecast a person into a straitjacket. “There were many enquiries for films done in clay animation similar to Amaron, however, we abstained from doing them. Instead, we concentrated on our pursuit in finding the right medium for a story,” says Eriyat.

Advantage, animation
According to Eriyat, animation succeeds more than other design approaches because it can address issues head on. He elaborates, “Animation can communicate in a razor sharp manner yet not hurt anyone like how live action films would provoke. An animated character may not get attached to a race, religion, age, sex or region, unless intended to. Additionally, complex issues can be addressed using simple narrative in minutes using animation.”
Why then do we see a dearth of animation-led content in India? Eriyat quips, “Currently, animation is looked at as an outsourced model of revenue generation and not as a powerful, engaging and timeless medium of storytelling. The other challenge is the lack of proper animation film making courses. Except for NID and IDC, there are hardly any institutes that can train kids in animation. Most of the institutes that are popular and common teach just the software and not the skills.”
The silver lining, though, is that it’s never too late to start out. “Animation has been associated with just ‘cartoons’. I would like to see a change in this perception as well as see more independent film makers coming into the animation short-film making space and produce path-breaking content in the years to come,” signs off the animation guru.