Anymotion. Animation.

So one evening, I was called by Mr. H (sounds all Kafkaesque, no?) to his desk and asked to “sit”. This, at Mr. H’s desk, is code for “there’s work coming up”. The work in question this time was writing for this blog every once in a while. As I sat there nodding along to what was being told to me, I quickly scanned my brain and tried to make a mental list of plausible topics that I could write about. I came up with precisely zero. Because here’s the thing - I don’t know squat about animation. I guess my saying this doesn’t do much for the credibility of the blog but I’d rather come clean than carry the burden of lying (successfully at that) through who-knows-how-many blog posts.

My saying this also allows me to do one more thing. It lets me talk about all the things I have learnt about animation, tiny as they may seem. This is my pick of the top three lessons I’ve learnt.

• Of Montreal is a good enough source of inspiration- The first time I sat down to write a script for Candy and Toothie, it reminded me of an Of Montreal song which went something to the effect of “Let’s pretend we don’t exist. Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica”.  This is not so much because the show is about some sublime existentialist philosophy (although it is slightly surreal) but mostly because you have to go through an entire process of unlearning and negation to be able to abandon whatever cynicism you’ve held on to so dearly all this while. And it’s not exactly the easiest thing to do.   
• “Hakuna Matata!” is more than a song- It’s the most sacred law there seems to be as far as animation is concerned. Nothing can go wrong!  Ice age coming you say? Ah, no worries… we’ll just throw in a quirky sloth with a grouchy mammoth and make sure everyone gets their ha-has for the day. Even ogres are allowed happy endings! And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I haven’t seen one out-and-out animated movie or show with a tragic ending. Maybe watching A Scanner Darkly will change my mind. But until then…
• If you’re not slightly cuckoo in the head, there’s no hope for you- Over my past few months of association with ThinxWorks, I’ve worked with an Englishman, a New Zealander and a Punjabi. They’re all “slightly” flaky and some of them are even immensely proud of it.  This just goes to show that what I’m saying is true. No matter which continent you come from, your Cuckoo Quotient is in direct proportion to the success of your creation.

Now as I recount my lessons learnt and wind-up this post, I’m already worried about what is to come. Sure, I’ve learnt some things but I doubt it’s enough to keep the blog alive. Because when I said “This is my pick of the top three lessons I’ve learnt”, I actually meant these are the only three lessons I’ve learnt. So yeah…

Shikha Gupta

Tags: Animation, Shikha Gupta, Thinxworks

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.