Press Release: 30 July 2011

An animation film screening programme was held at the Delhi Public School in Dimapur on Saturday 30 July. 

Students of class 8 expressed their enthusiasm for cartoons when they met Tara Douglas, Secretary of the Adivasi Arts Trust.  Tara was one of the animators who worked on a collection of tribal animation films called “The Tallest Story Competition”, for a Scottish company, West Highland Animation, in 2006, and she wanted to share the animated folktales from Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra with the students.  After the screening, Tara asked the students to vote for their favorite story, and she explained how local art styles had been chosen to give a unique look to each of the films.   The students had not heard any of the stories before, nor could they recollect any from their own tradition, but they all thought animation was a fun way of learning new things. 

Tara is presently in Nagaland for two months to complete an animated folktale from Nagaland for a new series of stories from the Northeast.  Students of Delhi Public School were intimated to look out for the first screening of the short film planned to be held at the Hornbill Festival in December. 

She encouraged the youngsters by telling them of her own experiences as an animator and she proposed it as something they could do in the future but she also warned them that animation is very hard work. “An animator really needs to be interested.  Unlike other jobs, it goes on long after regular office hours, but because it is magic an animator is happy to work hard,” she said, reminding them that “we do not mind working hard to do something that we enjoy.  An animator first has to imagine the film in his mind.  Each scene has to be sketched as a storyboard which is quite like a comic book, and you really have to get to know the characters before you can start using software to bring them to life. The first step anyone who is interested in animation can take is to keep alert for good stories.”