Things to ponder before you choose an IT/ Animation Training Institute.

Note: This points are applicable only to students who are serious about what they want to do in life and want to create a career, those who are learning just to kill time in vacations or for fun, please do not waste your time reading the following points:

1. Choose a course/ program that suits your background: 

Many students get carried away by what is possible but do not do a reality check. Let me give an example, today we see many students without commercial art or similar background rush to do animation courses. They realize they have done a big mistake only after they completed the course, spent valuable time and money. Yes it is fun to learn and do animation; yes you might even get your first job because there is serious crunch of animators in the industry. But the real story starts once you are into the job for 6 months or a year. You will feel stuck and find yourself not growing and not getting higher responsibilities not for any other reason but the fact that you are misfit for doing high end jobs in the field. Do you really want to get into a career where you don’t grow?

2. Take advice from someone who has been there done that: 

As a student you might not have the right knowledge to judge the quality of course content. Everything written on that beautiful brochure would mean wow to you. However, due to various reasons, not all institutes including those having centers in every corner of India update the courses to match the pace according to what is required in the industry. So please find out an experienced professional who can help you judge the content of the course. Preferably the person advising you should have more than 3 – 4 years experience in the respective field. For god sake don’t do a course just because your friends or relatives are doing it. It is good to have company, but then it cannot be the reason to join the course. I think you can put your Facebook, Orkut & CGtantra skills to good use to find someone who can help you.

3. No Pain No Gain: 

One of the weird reasons why students choose a particular institute is because they are nearby their home. If you know an institute which is away but better then the one near your home, please don’t be silly to compromise on quality just because of location. If you are doing a course to build a career, take the pain to travel, and learn from best possible location, all efforts will give you rich dividends in the future.

4. Pay the Fees in Installment whenever possible: 

You are all excited about learning a new skill, you find a place, you pay the full fees, you get a receipt which has clearly written on it ‘NON REFUNDABLE’. Later if you find the institute is not up to the mark, or you don’t feel interested in the subject, be prepared for a lifelong reminder from your parents. ‘You paid the fees but you never completed the course’. The escape route here is to choose to pay in installments, so that you only pay the next installment if everything is going in line with your expectations.

5. Choose a technology of future rather then a present phenomenon: 

Hype is one demon that can take even the most wise men for a ride. Don’t do a course just because it is in demand right now, consider the duration of the course and assess will you be able to capitalize on the hype, or will the hype fizz out by the time you complete the course? Try to find out areas which are not in demand right now, but have a huge potential in next 4-5 years. It is always good to be associated with a technology which is yet to reach its peak, rather then getting into a technology where the top slot is full.

6. Don’t continue learning at a bad institute: 

Time is money, but we forget to implement its essence in our lives. You have paid the fees, but unfortunately the institute is not upto the mark. Quit it immediately, spending more time at a bad institute is not going to help your career in anyway. You can prevent such situation to arise by doing your homework well.

7. Do not choose a course just because the course/ program fee is less: 

IT/ Animation Training is an expensive business. Keeping good infrastructure, hiring quality trainers with in-depth knowledge is expensive, hence at many institutes the fees though may seem to be high, but the value they deliver more then makes up for the high cost. Unfortunately, many institutes are expensive for wrong reasons. To fund their advertisement expenses. Learn to differentiate between the 2 types. Because of the franchise system, the sole objective is money making and sadly wrong things end up being compromised. If an institute is charging radically low fees, I doubt you will get quality. You might get the satisfaction of getting an amazing deal and making huge savings. But it is being pennywise and pound foolish. You will get a raw deal in terms of salary if you have not learnt from quality source, or worst you will not get a job.

Please Note: Please stay away from 21 courses in Rs. 5000/- types. 

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1. Age of the Institute

All successful institution go through a trial and error period in fine tuning their course, where they work out what works best for their students. If it is the first time the institute is opening, it is not the best idea to become the Institute's "Guinea Pig". Besides the older the school, the bigger the alumi would be which translates into a goodwill in the market for that institute, hence the recruiters would be more keen to see your work than compared to others.

2. Experience of Faculty

You should demand to know the experience of the tutors there. It is not a uncommon to find that the sometimes the faculty are actually fresh graduates of the institute. Ask to see their showreels if possible to see what exactly have they worked on.

3. Number of Faculty

A school which employs many teachers to teach a specialist subject(modelling, texturing, animation) is slightly better because then the teachers can you give better attention, since the teacher to student ratio is spread out and is low. Plus if you don't get along well with one teacher, there is always others you are can rely on. Having said there are lots of generalist teachers out there who are very competent.

4. Demo Reel of Students

Ask to see the showreels(not stills) of the students. One should see what the final product looks like. It is always good idea to compare the quality of the showreels versus good International Institutes such as Ringling, VFS or Animation mentor. Stay away from institute which refuse to show their work of their best students.

5. Course Content

Choose institute which also makes emphasis on the art side, apart from the technical side, ie they also teach a bit of 2d Animation, sculpting, life drawing, acting classes etc. These would help you build a good artistic foundation of your career. If your institute does not provide these facilities, it is recommended you do these courses along with your 3d program.

Light and Camera

Top 20 Animation Movies - What Makes Them Tick?

Being in the animation industry, it is in my interest to keep abreast of which animated feature films are taking the most box office profits. Today I run by this list of the top 20 highest grossing animation movies of all time and I would like to share my views on why I think these movies did as well as they did. They will make up my recommended recipe for an animated feature box office hit.

1. Shrek 2 (3D) - $436,471,036
2. Finding Nemo (3D) - 339,714,978
3. The Lion King (2D) - 328,539,505
4. Shrek the Third (3D) - $322,719,944
5. Shrek (3D) - 267,665,011
6. The Incredibles (3D) - 261,657,004
7. Monsters, Inc. (3D) - 255,870,172
8. Toy Story 2 (3D) - $245,852,179
9. Cars (3D) - $244,082,982
10. Aladdin (2D) - 217,350,219
11. Ratatouille (3D) - $206,445,654
12. Happy Feet (3D) - $198,000,317
13. Ice Age: Meltdown (3D) - $195,330,621
14. Madagascar (3D) - $193,595,521
15. Toy Story (3D) - $191,780,865
16. The Simpsons Movie (2D) - $183,135,014
17. The Polar Express (3D) - $179,100,434
18. Ice Age (3D) - 176,387,405
19. Beauty and the Beast (2D) - $171,350,553
20. Tarzan (2D) - $171,091,819

Shrek - Top of the Crop

Shrek 2 takes the lead as you can see from the list. In fact, the Shrek trilogy takes the 1st, 4th and 5th positions, all in the top 5 positions. This is a very impressive feat and in my opinion, Shrek took the cake because the stories were really good and the gags were good. Of course it helped a lot that 4 major stars were casted - Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas and Mike Myers. In fact, of the Shrek trilogy, I enjoyed Shrek 2 the most, so personally I am not surprised that it performed the best out of the three.

3D versus 2D

From the list below, we can see that 3D movies take 15 of the spots, in comparison with its 2D counterparts that take only 5 seats. It would seem from this statistic that the audience is favoring 3D animation to 2D animation. Even 2D/3D fusion shows like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Treasure Planet did not seem to please them enough. It would seem that The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Tarzen are only in the top 20 positions because of their strong family-orientated storylines and classic branding. The Simpsons Movie benefited basically through a huge fan base through its TV series. Barring such unique franchises, it would appear that a 3D show would trounce a 2D one any day. The animation studios seem to be echoing this sentiment as the quantity of 2D animated features produced has dwindled drastically in recent years.

A Strong Storyline

This is probably not new to you, but I will say it anyway. I think that one of the most important factors that will drive an animated feature would be a strong and compelling storyline. In fact I would go as far as to say that if you forgo everything else, you must have a great story to tell! Every single movie on the list tells an interesting story (well almost) and they all did well enough to make it to top twenty.

Laughter, the Best Medicine

People like to laugh. They like to laugh at others. They like to laugh at themselves. They just like to laugh. All things constant, I think Shrek takes three of the top five positions because of their gags and original jokes. And do not forget the two maestros of comedy - Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy - who performed the voiceovers for Shrek and Donkey respectively. How can you beat that lethal duo?

A Strong Voiceover Cast

It is a fact that a star-studded cast for the voiceovers is a crowd-puller, especially when the celebrities are well-liked and great performers. Again, refer to Shrek's cast. With Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, how can the movie go wrong?

The Importance of Recognizable Characters within the Show

This is just my theory, but I strongly believe that besides having a strong storyline, animated features should also showcase recognizable characters. And when I say recognizable characters, I don't mean plain human characters. I mean monsters. I mean animals. I mean super heroes. With characters that are more interesting than humans, they are instantly more recognizable. Look at the list closely. Besides a couple of the old 2D movies, which other movie had a cast that only had plain old human beings for its lead? Having interesting and identifiable characters will most definitely attract ticket sales because people want to pay to watch interesting characters in an animated feature, not plain old human being! I don't have to remind you again what a flop Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was, do I?

My Personal Favorites

In case you are wondering, my personal favorites are Monster Inc, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Shrek 2 and Ice Age in that order. My reason? They all have strong and compelling storylines. And I put them in this order according to how much I enjoyed each individual movie. I must say that Monster Inc gave me the best enjoyment factor!

Conclusion

So here's my recommended recipe for a animated feature box office success:

1. The movie must be done in 3D
2. It must have a compelling story to tell
3. Inject lots of humor into the show
4. Get a strong cast to be your voiceover talents
5. The character designs must be interesting and memorable

I hope that this article has been an interesting read. 

The Rule of Thirds

Using the steps outlined previously will help to tighten up your composition. Now we will look at a few techniques you can employ to help improve your composition. If you are taking photographs for your own pleasure, as I assume you are, then you only have to come up with pictures that please you. You may be able to overlook the huge empty spaces or people with their heads cut off but no-one else will. That cute kid looks really cute it's just a pity that you need a magnifying glass to see him. Producing pictures that are pleasing to someone other than yourself will make your photography much more rewarding. 

The Rule of Thirds. 

One of the most popular 'rules' in photography is the Rule of Thirds. It is also popular amongst artists. It works like this: Imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect. I've even made a little diagram for you

(fig 1).

As well as using the intersections you can arrange areas into bands occupying a third or place things along the imaginary lines. As you can see it is fairly simple to implement. Good places to put things; third of the way up, third of the way in from the left, you get the idea. Duff places to put things; right in the middle, right at the top, right at the bottom, away in the corner. 

Using the Rule of Thirds helps produce nicely balanced easy on the eye pictures. Also, as you have to position things relative to the edges of the frame it helps get rid of ' tiny subject surrounded by vast empty space' syndrome.

One last thing about the Rule of Thirds for the time being. Once you have got the hang of the Rule of Thirds you will very quickly want to break it! This is fine. As I said earlier these 'rules' are best used as guidelines and if you can create a better image by bending or ignoring rules then fire away.

The Rule of Thirds is fairly structured but there are a great many methods you can employ which rely on your ability to 'see' things and incorporate them into your composition. Next up we will look at some, but by no means all, of them.

Happy Diwali

शुभ दीपावली ! आपका जीवन मंगलमय हो !

Wishing you a very Happy & Prosperous Diwali.

A little facts about Diwali.

Deepavali is celebrated as the homecoming of Rama after a 14-year exile in the forest and his victory over Ravana at many places of India and Nepal. The people of Ayodhya (the capital of his kingdom) welcomed Rama by lighting rows (avali) of lamps (dipa/diya).

In South India, it marks the victory of Krishna over Narakasura. Over time, this word transformed into Diwali in Hindi and Dipawali in Nepali, but still retained its original form in South and East Indian Languages. In Dravidian languages it is called as Deepavali and the same is used in Malaysia and Singapore.

In Jainism, Diwali marks the attainment of nirvana by Lord Mahavira.

Deepavali has been significant in Sikhism since the illumination of the town of Amritsar commemorating the return of Guru Har Gobind Ji. Sikhs often refer to Diwali also as Bandi Chhorh Divas - "the day of release of detainees."

The festival is also celebrated by Buddhists in Nepal, particularly the Newar Buddhists.
In India and Nepal, Diwali is now considered to be a national festival, and the aesthetic aspect of the festival is enjoyed by most Indians and Nepalese regardless of faith.

While Diwali is popularly known as the "festival of lights", the most significant spiritual meaning is "the awareness of the inner light".

 

The History of Photoshop

The next time you fire up your copy of Photoshop, spare a thought for the scores of developers and the reams of code that have gone into making it…


While you won’t find it printed on any calendar, 2005 marks a quiet anniversary for the program that you, and many other graphic designers, probably use the most. It was 15 years ago in February that Adobe shipped version 1.0 of Photoshop – still its most popular (and lucrative) application, and possibly the only bit of software to have spawned its own verb form.


But the true origins of Photoshop go back even further. The program whose splash screen now displays 41 names was originally the product of just two brothers, Thomas and John Knoll, as fascinated by technology as they were by art. It was a trait they’d inherited from their father, a photography buff with his own personal darkroom in the basement and a penchant for early home computers.


Thus Thomas dabbled with photography, learning about colour correction and contrast in the darkroom, while John happily tinkered with his dad’s Apple II computer. When their dad – clearly an early adopter – bought one of the first Macs on the market in 1984, both were bowled over by its capabilities. Yet ironically it was its frustrating inadequacies that would eventually lead to the multi-million dollar application sitting on nearly everyone’s hard drive today.


In the beginning
By 1987, John Knoll was working at Industrial Light and Magic – Lucasfilm’s nascent special effects division, founded for Star Wars – while Thomas was studying for his Ph.D. on image processing at the University of Michigan. Having just bought a brand-new Apple Mac Plus to help out with his thesis, he was dismayed to find it couldn’t display greyscale images on the monochrome monitor. So, in true hacker style, he set about writing his own code to do the job.


Unsurprisingly, John was also working on image processing at ILM, and during a holiday visit he became very impressed with Thomas’s progress. In the book CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference, John says: “As Tom showed me his work, it struck me how similar it was to the image-processing tools on the Pixar [a custom computer used at ILM].” Thus the pair began to collaborate on a larger, more cohesive application, which they dubbed – excitingly – Display.


It wasn’t long before John had bought a new colour Macintosh II and persuaded Thomas to rewrite Display to work in colour. Indeed, the more John saw of Display, the more features he began to ask for: gamma correction, loading and saving other file formats, and so on.


Although this work distracted Thomas from his thesis, he was quite happy to oblige. He also developed an innovative method of selecting and affecting only certain parts of the image, as well as a set of image-processing routines – which would later become plug-ins. A feature for adjusting tones (Levels) also emerged, along with controls for balance, hue and saturation. These were the defining features of Photoshop, but at the time, it was almost unthinkable to see them anywhere outside of specialist processing software in a lab – or at ILM.


By 1988, Display had become ImagePro and was sufficiently advanced that John thought they might have a chance at selling it as a commercial application. Thomas was reluctant: he still hadn’t finished his thesis, and creating a full-blown app would take a lot of work. But once John had checked out the competition, of which there was very little, they realised ImagePro was way ahead of anything currently available.


From ImagePro to Photoshop
Thus the search began for investors. It didn’t help that Thomas kept changing the name of the software, only to find a name was already in use elsewhere. No one is quite sure where the name ‘Photoshop’ originally came from, but legend has it that it was suggested by a potential publisher during a demo, and just stuck. Incidentally, splash screens from very early versions show the name as ‘PhotoShop’ – which seems far more in line with today’s craze for ExTraneous CapitaliSation.


Remarkably in retrospect, most software companies turned their corporate noses up at Photoshop, or were already developing similar applications of their own. Only Adobe was prepared to take it on, but a suitable deal wasn’t forthcoming. Eventually, though, a scanner manufacturer called Barneyscan decided to bundle it with its scanners, and a small number of copies went out under the name Barneyscan XP.


Fortunately for the future of digital imaging, this wasn’t a long-term deal, and John soon returned to Adobe to drum up more interest. There he met Russell Brown, then Art Director, who was highly impressed with the program and persuaded the company to take it on. Whether through naivety on Adobe’s part or canniness on the brothers’, Photoshop was not sold wholesale but only licensed and distributed, with royalties still going to the Knolls.


It wasn’t as if this deal meant the Knoll brothers could sit back and relax; if anything, they now had to work even harder on getting Photoshop ready for an official, 1.0 version release. Thomas continued developing all the main application code, while John contributed plug-ins separately, to the dismay of some of the Adobe staff who viewed these as little more than gimmicks.


Curiously, this attitude still remains among some purists, who claim that most Photoshop plug-ins are somehow ‘cheating’ and not be touched under any circumstances, while others swear by their flexibility and power when used properly.


As in the program’s formative days, there were always new features to be added, and somehow Thomas had to make time to code them. With the encouragement of John, Russell Brown – soon to become Photoshop’s biggest evangelist – and other creatives at Adobe, the application slowly took shape. It was finally launched in February 1990.


Digital imaging for everyone
This first release was certainly a success, despite the usual slew of bugs. Like the Apple of today, Adobe’s key marketing decision was to present Photoshop as a mass-market, fairly simple tool for anyone to use – rather than most graphics software of the time, which was aimed at specialists.


With Photoshop, you could be achieving the same things on your home desktop Mac that were previously only possible with thousands of dollars of advanced equipment… at least, that was the implicit promise. There was also the matter of pricing. Letraset’s ColorStudio, which had launched shortly before, cost $1,995; Photoshop was less than $1,000.


With development of version 2.0 now underway, Adobe began to expand the coding staff. Mark Hamburg was taken on to add Bézier paths, while other new features included the Pen tool, Duotones, import and rasterisation of Illustrator files, plus, crucially, support for CMYK colour. This was another canny move on Adobe’s part, as it opened up the Photoshop market to print professionals for the first time. The program’s first Product Manager, Steven Guttman, started giving code names to beta versions, a practice which survives to this day. ‘Fast Eddy’ – version 2 – was launched the following year.


Until now Photoshop was still a Mac-only application, but its success warranted a version for the burgeoning Windows graphics market. Porting it was not a trivial task: a whole new team, headed by Bryan Lamkin, was brought in for the PC. Oddly, although there were other significant new features such as 16-bit file support, this iteration was shipped as version 2.5.


Like that difficult third album which can make or break a band, version 3 had to really deliver if it was to corner the market. Fortunately, the team had a whopper of an ace up their sleeve: layers.


By general consensus, the addition of layers has been the single most important aspect of Photoshop development, and probably the feature which finally persuaded many artists to try it. Yet the concept of layers wasn’t unique to Photoshop. HSC – later to become MetaCreations – was concurrently developing Live Picture, an image-editing app including just such a facility. While an excellent program in its own right, Live Picture was vastly overpriced on its launch, leaving Photoshop 3.0 for both Mac and Windows to clean up.


Nothing in later versions quite matched the layers feature for its impact, but there have nonetheless been significant changes. Version 5 introduced colour management and the History palette, with its extra ‘nonlinear history’ behaviour, which certainly opened up whole new creative possibilities. A major update, version 5.5, bundled Adobe’s package ImageReady in an entirely new iteration, giving Photoshop excellent Web-specific features. Layer styles and improved text handling popped up in version 6, and the Healing brush in version 7.


Today and tomorrow
Surprisingly given the age and market leading position of the application, Adobe continues to come up with new features for Photoshop. With Photoshop now part of the rebranded and remarketed Creative Suite 2, Adobe appears to be currently emphasising interoperability through the likes of Bridge.


But the program can’t and won’t stand still. For one thing, it faces much greater competition from a host of rivals, many of which claim to offer Photoshop’s power without the price. Lower-cost apps aimed at the amateur or home enthusiast, such as Paint Shop Pro on Windows, have had many years to learn from Photoshop. Adobe’s solution was to join them, launching the budget priced and feature-reduced but still immensely powerful Photoshop Elements – which itself has now reached version 4.


And the future? Unsurprisingly, Adobe isn’t telling. Photoshop is the jewel in its crown and its development is closely guarded. But there have been hints. Bryan Lamkin, now Senior Vice President of Digital Imaging and Digital Video, speculated earlier this year on a true 64-bit version of the application, and perhaps support for Apple’s CoreImage technology, which would bring enormous speed improvements. Rumours that Illustrator will merge with Photoshop have also abounded for years.


Whatever happens, it’s likely that Thomas Knoll will be involved in some way. Although not directly concerned with Photoshop these days, he still keeps his hand in, recently developing the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in and posting occasionally to the Adobe forums.


His brother still works at ILM too: appropriately enough, he was Visual Effects Supervisor on all three of the new Star Wars films. Without the original Star Wars, there would have been no Photoshop; and with no Photoshop, your job, this magazine and the entire graphics design industry would be very different from how they are today.

2 MONTHS ADVANCED STOP-MOTION FILM MAKING PROGRAM

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Want some help with Photoshop basics?  To refresh on some basic and intermediate stuff again?

I'm giving you 60 basic online tutorials at the link below.

It's a couple years old and in Photoshop CS but you can still learn from it (esp. if you're new to PS).

Here's the link: http://getresponse.com/click.html?x=a62b&lc=8jNe&mc=f&s=FsR3&y=7&

Just some complimentary tutorials for ya!

-Orion