It is really heartening that animation education is picking up in India and aspiring animators now have many options than we ever had before. During the early nineties, passionate guys who wanted to somehow get into the animation/computer graphics/special effects industries had no options at all. Most of them were self taught, and decided to weather the vicissitudes, creating opportunities for themselves and in the process growing in their careers in a slowly growing industry. People with passion and talent came into the animation field from various fields – engineering, science, arts, commerce etc.

Towards the late nineties and early 2000’s, one could see many private institutions spring up that taught animation courses. Most of these (except NID, Ahmedabad, Heart Animation, Hyderabad and ZICA, Hyderabad/Bombay) were short term fast track courses – mainly catering to the requirements of the growing animation industry. Many companies started getting established which were taking on outsourced projects, and they were looking out for trained people in specific areas. There was not much of a choice for someone who wanted to get a formal degree education in animation in India.

The scene is different now. It is nice to see many universities offering 3 year animation degree courses. Many private animation institutes have also started offering long term courses, with matured and evolved course curricula (Picasso, Toonskool etc). Apart from this, many tie ups between the industry and academia have been witnessed in the past few years.

This is a good time for aspiring animators. I hope many more institutes come up. The animation industry is woefully short of trained animators.

As a consultant, I was recently happily involved with Manipal University in designing their animation and gaming course curricula. They offer a 3 year BSc Animation course. I enjoyed the experience of designing their animation/gaming course curriculum.

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