Some of my earliest memories of watching television are - seeing ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons and ‘The Adventures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck’. Growing up in India in the late 80s one had access to only the national television network called ‘Doordarshan’. During the long summer vacation special programmes for children were broadcast and these invariably included cartoons.
In the early 90s in an era of foreign investment and international companies re-entering India the cable-TV revolution started with the arrival of Star-TV and other international programming. For the first-time, television in India actually became interesting with a huge variety of TV-shows and cartoons exclusively for children. Before Cartoon Network became an independent channel; there used to be cartoons for half a day and Turner Classic movies for the other half.
No one envisaged the massive growth of international television programming content in India. Today with the advancement of technology and direct-to-home television the sheer number of choices for dedicated cartoon channels is amazing. I envy the current generation of children who can pick and choose the cartoons they wish to watch and the amazingly detailed games that they get to play on their X-box and PlayStation.
Animation is the fastest growing tech-related industry; this has been the trend for the past three years and as per industry-experts and senior business analysts this will continue to be the trend for the next decade. With a multitude of devices ranging from Android and Windows tablets, smart-phones, phablets and a demand for unique gaming and entertainment content for them; the demand for highly skilled and trained animation artists and graphic designers is at an all-time high.
Some of the industries, which make use of the expertise of animation artists are:
- The movie and television industry
- Video and mobile-gaming industry
- E-learning industry
- Architectural design
- Electrical and electronic product design
Singapore as a popular hub for animation courses:
Singapore with its proximity to the Indian sub-continent, lesser living costs, and English as the language of instruction is becoming a popular higher education destination among students from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc.
Some of the top-ranking institutions offering animation courses in Singapore are listed below:
Why Singapore is a great choice for Indian students?
- Affordable high-quality, internationally accredited courses
- Chance to work on live movie and gaming projects
- State-of-the-art learning and training facilities
- Opportunities for scholarships
- Proximity to India and great flight connectivity with major Indian studies
- Cost of living is lesser when compared to the US, Europe or Australia.
The path ahead for animators:
Did you know that a major portion of the animation and special effects generated by computers for blockbusters like ‘Avatar’, ‘The Lord of the Rings trilogy’, ‘Avengers’, ‘Life of Pi’ etc. were done out of support studios in India? Amazing is it not! Well as a successful animator you can find jobs in the movie-industry or design backgrounds, layouts and character-driven stories for games on multiple platforms.
As stated earlier the boom in the growth of the Android operating system has led to the availability of inexpensive smart-phones and tablet devices. ‘Angry Birds’ and its unprecedented success that spawned a movie, comics, toys and merchandise is the standard example of what a well-designed game can do to save a company - Rovio in this case. Do you have the idea for the next big game - then go ahead and take a chance!
Apps - the new buzzword:
When Steve Jobs launched the i-pod a portable music device; even he would not have predicted what a huge success this product would become.
Eventually we would get to see the genius of Steve and his design and technology team in products like the i-phone and i-pad. A whole new market for applications, each customized to run on different devices was born. The craze for apps for games, movies, driving instructions, movie news, portable dictionaries, the list runs on is absolutely unprecedented.
Apple among many things laid the base for a great Operating System; Android, which promotes freedom and open-source is the new hunting ground for app-developers and not to forget Windows-8, which is designed for touch-screen devices is gaining popularity slowly. Blackberry and RIM the company that launched the service are facing a fair share of problems but they do have their loyal band of followers.
To summarize all this if movies do not interest you or games seem childish, then you can go into application development for diverse operating systems, which power a variety of devices.
Conclusion:
A career as an animator or professional app-developer is not as easy and simple as it sounds. One needs to have an eye for detail, a love for colour and design and a flair for creativity. The future looks extremely positive and with more foreign movie studios and game-design companies setting up shop in India an accredited course in animation from Singapore is your perfect launch-pad for a productive and successful career.
A quote from the master animator Walt Disney to end this article:
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
Image Credit: www.sollywoodanimation.com