Footprints in Sand...

3^rd January, Kalkunj, Kolkata: TASK’s New Year gift to animation lovers of eastern India was “Footprints in Sand”. Conducted by Delwyn Remedios who had mesmerized the audience at Anifest ’08 and Debjani Mukherjee, his batch mate, this sand animation workshop stole the hearts of a 300 strong crowd that had braved a transport-strike to attend it. These makers of the much appreciated film, “Chai Break” (the outcome of an experimental animation workshop at NID using sand as the medium) engrossed the audience with a 2 ½ hour long interactive session. They took us through their journey of the making of their film, reliving their memories and at the same time, educating us about the various do’s and don’ts of sand animation.

Delwyn and Debjani started the workshop by inviting three volunteers from the audience and asked them to sketch a human being. Later he combined the head, body and legs from the three drawing – taking one element from each drawing to make a completely different being. He had just introduced the audience to “cut-out” animation technique. He further illustrated this technique by showing his film “

akansha” which has used this technique of animation.

The most important lesson that the audience took home was, “while working with sand, never be afraid of making mistakes. Rather, fall in love with. Merge them with your film. They’ll make you learn a lot and in the end become a very valuable part of your film,” as pointed out by Debjani.

The unique thing about sand is its formlessness, as Delwyn pointed out. So, the movements become much more important than the formations. The beauty of the medium lies in the ease with which morphing and trans

formations can take place. Interaction with the medium becomes very important as animating with sand is more of a personal experience as both speakers re-iterated many a time. Every maker’s point of view is reflected in the story as is his/her personal traits. Also, it is essential for us to “let the sand tell the story.”

The whole session was divided into three parts, screening of a few films, including Chai Break, the making of the film and a live workshop which resulted in a short animation film worked on by both speakers and also a few volunteers from the audience. 

Delwyn and Debjani further explained that they had learnt the importance of understanding their teammates while working on the film as they worked in shifts and it was essential that the idea was carried forward properly. They had also learnt that it did not pay to be rigid about their ideas as the interaction with sand led to a lot of innovations by itself.

The duo answered a lot of questions from the very inquisitive audience including queries about handling a walk-cycle on 

sand, the concept of ‘boiling’ the sand, the post-production stage and even the set-up required to try their own hands at it.

 The icing on the cake was a short talk by the mentor of this dynamic duo. Sekharda wrapped up 

the session by screening a few animation films as a New Years gift to the audience. The Korean 

film “Walking in the Rain” emphasized the need of simplicity in story-telling, imagination in ideation process, and the difference between obscenity and a work of art. A few other films, made by the students of NID really inspired the audience with their unique concepts. Sekharda stressed that “animation is not two-minute noodles; it requires a lot of labour, passion and hard w

ork, along with a lot of patience and love for the medium.”

He encouraged the young animators to participate in the upcoming Kol.Katha’09 and promised that this film festival would create a new bench-mark for Indian animation film-making, redefining its course.

TASK President Mr. Ruia added, “It is really encouraging to see the support extended by the participants to these newer avenues of animation that we are determined to open up to animation lovers of this region. We promise that this is just the tip of the iceberg. We have a long way to go.”