Animated discussions

Working in this direction,Paresh Parekh,creative head of Frameboxx Animation and Visual Effects,was in the city for a workshop where he broke a whole lot of myths about how animation is traditionally viewed. “People generally think that once you know how to work on the software,you are sorted,but animation is about a lot of other things as well,” he says. A graduate from the National School of Drama (NSD),Parekh began his career as an actor in Hindi and Gujarati Plays under the direction of theatre luminaries such as Barry John,Satyadev Dubey,Ram Gopal Bajaj and Naseeruddin Shah,among others. It is here that he learnt the subtleties of acting and followed his dream.

An enthusiastic actor,Parekh soon started working with children. “ I worked with children for eight years,and I got to know so much from them. In fact,those years have shaped my acting career today and animation later on. I understood how animation works only after I interacted with these children.” At the workshop Parekh will be talking about a milieu of fields to work on – from creating advertisements,to creating characters to putting emotions in them. Explaining how acting and animation are deeply linked he says ,“To put life into a life less thing,requires skills that are beyond just creating a character technically. One has to emote it too,and this is where acting comes into play.” Parekh teaches his students using the method of role play how to actually feel like the character,act out that bit and then go on to create it on the technical side. No wonder then the characters like Aladdin,Bagheera have transcended the scopes of screens and related to everyone so well. So what does he think of animation in India today? “There are stories waiting to be told in India. Each of our Panchatantra stories can be made into fantastic animation show-reels,but what is required is just a quick hand and a knack to capture the emotions correctly,” he replies.