If a picture tells a thousand words, an animation tells a million!

Recently, I had a discussion with several SolidWorks users about unique ways of exploring and showcasing SolidWorks models and noticed a common hesitancy when the conversation turned to using Animations.  To my amazement this hesitancy came from premonitions that creating an Animation is hugely complex or involves a pricey add in.  In reality, creating an animation is very easy and the tools to do so are included in every copy of SolidWorks.  In this blog, we’ll take a look creating an animation.

To begin, I’ll need something to animate, so here’s my assembly:

The intention is to have the boat pull into harbour and the package be lowered onto it.  We’ll also have a vehicle drive past on the road behind just to make the animation a little more interesting.  Bonus points for anyone who can name the car!

First step is to prepare the assembly for animation by adding in appropriate mates, the intention here is to limit the axis of freedom in the components we want to animate.  In my assembly this is the boat and the car.  As you can see in the images below I've mated the boat to a sketch line defining the path I want it to follow.  For the car, I've mated the tyres to the road to stop it floating away when I try to move it.

Now the assembly is prepared we can begin work on the animation itself.  We begin by ‘right clicking’ on the model tab and selecting ‘Create new Motion Study’ if no motion study tab is present.  By switching over to the Motion Study tab the interface used to create animations is visible. There are two main tools that are used here: the vertical time bar and the component ‘keys’, these tools are highlighted in the image below

A top tip here is to ensure the ‘Autokey’ functionality is enabled.  This automatically creates keys in relation to where we have our time bar placed.  The purpose of this function will become clearer when I begin to move my components around.

I can now start to define the movement of the components in my animation.  This is achieved by firstly moving the time bar to the desired postion, then simply moving the component in the graphics area.  An example of this is shown below, firstly I move my time bar to 13 seconds, then move the boat to where I want it to be at 13 seconds.

The same process is then repeated for the car and boat package.  A good tip if you have difficulty controlling the movement is to ‘right click’ and select ‘move with triad’ as I do in the images below where I move the car along the road and lower the package onto the boat.  Notice I set the package to begin lowering at 13 seconds, this is achieved by simply dragging the start key to the desired time location.

The last thing left to do is set up some appropriate orientations for viewing the animation from.  This is achieved by positioning the orientation where desired, placing the time bar where you want that specific view to be used, right clicking and selecting ‘place key’.

Once you have your view orientations established make use of the ‘recalculate’ button to update your study and preview your animation and that’s it! You’ve created an animation.  Use the save button when your happy with the results.

When saving you have extensive control over the output with the ability to define file type, aspect ratio, frames rate and so on.  Additionally, you have a choice of renderer, with the ability to use either the standard SolidWorks screen or if available, Photoview.

Check out the animation I created in the process of creating this blog in the video below:

Animation at NID: A brief History

Chitrakatha 2009 and the memories from NID's animation journeys

Prof. M P Ranjan

With the CNBC TV18 bestowing a singular honor by recognizing Sekhar Mukherjee as India’s animation teacher of excellence through their Golden Cursor Excellence in Animation Awards conferred on him 8 May 2009 at a glittering function in Mumbai we get an opportunity to look back at the stirrings of animation in India and how it set roots at NID.

Image01: The CNBC TV 18 award to Sekhar Mukherjee has finally brought some recognition to NID teachers in Animation Design discipline. We can review this in the backdrop of the Chitrakatha 2009 events at NID over the past three days.

This is a brief but incomplete history of the valiant efforts made at NID over the years to establish an animation based profession in India, the first institute to take up this challenge. Jayanthi Sen in her article in Animation World Network ion 19 October 1999 maps the origins of animation in India with the arrival of the Cartoon Film Unit at the Films Division set up buy the Government of India. In the mid 50’s they brought Disney Studio maestro, Claire Weeks to train the first batch of trained animators for the Indian scene. The story of NID’s contribution to Indian animation has not been written and I do hope that some serious research scholar will take up this challenge and articulate the epic journey from its origins in 1963 when the Oxbury camera came to NID to the Chitrakatha 2009 and beyond.

Image02: Animation heros seen at the Chitrakatha 2009 event on the NID campus at Paldi. Each of them a leader in the field and with many successful films to their credit.

However in 1961 NID was set up at Ahmedabad and very early in its development the Visual Communication programmes were established with the offering of the first Post Graduate Programme that started in 1963. Amongst the first batch was Ishu Patel who having joined the programme to study Graphic Design gravitated to learning animation after a foundation in Graphics from the master Armin Hoffman. While he was a student at NID two animators came to NID and made a great little film in the mid 60’s called Swimmy. Leo Leonni and Gulio Gianini were assisted by Ishu Patel, Mahendra C Patel, Vikas Satwalekar and I S Mathur, all first generation students at NID in the Visual Communication programme.

Image03: Chitrakatha 2007 showcased NID animation and set the stage for a broader recognition of NID’s contributions to the field of animation film making in India over the years.

Ishu Patel studied Graphics at Basel under Armin Hoffman and in 1970 was deputed to the National Film Board of Canada to study animation. This started a life long passion for animation and a long string of great experimental films made both at NID as well as at the NFBC which he joined full time in 1972. He returned to India each year to share his work at the Institute and many NFBC films came into the NID archives most notable of which are the fine collection from Norman McLaren and later from Ishu Patel himself. Saul Bass and Charles and Ray Eames too were highly influential in the early years in shaping the directions of animation at NID through screenings of their work on a regular basis in the NID auditorium.

Ishu Patel on Wikipedia
Leo Leoni on Wikipedia
Gulio Gianini on Wikipedia
Charles and Ray Eames on Wikipedia
Saul Bass on Wikipedia
National Film Board of Canada on Wikipedia

Image04: Scenes from Chitrakatha 2009 at NID campus between 29th and 31st October 2009.

The next generation of NID students included R L Mistry and Narayanbhai Patel who took to animation and illustration through their long career as student and later teachers NID. Narayanbhai experimented with paper sculpture based animations while R L Mistry explored many styles of illusrtration and developed his art to a very high level of perfection and achieved the distinction of getting the National Award for his film the national Highway from the President of India. After Ishu Patel left NID in 1972 it was R L Mistry who took up the major responsibility of teaching animation to students at NID and there were a steady stream of interested candidates who loved the medium and wished to explore but the funding was limited and hard to find and the Oxbury camera was available only in limited periods due to cost of operation. NID’s exhibition design projects brought in many opportunities for the animation activity and the education programme too legitimized the periodic use of the medium for basic exercises that were many.

R L Mistry on NID website : A book by Prakash Moorthy

Image05: Additional scenes from Chitrakatha 2009 at NID campus between 29th and 31st October 2009.

The next batch of NID animators included Nina Sabnani, Binita Desai and Chitra Sarathy who joined NID as informal learners in short term programmes offered by the department and International consultants were present to conduct some of the programmes for these students at NID. The trio spent a period of experimental work in Calcutta with the Graphic Designer Raghunath Goswami who experimented with the medium for social communication tasks as part of his studio in the Eastern India. NID produced a intermediate technology animation stand for use with a stop frame movie camera and this stand was shifted to Calcutta for use by the NID animators in Goswami’s office. Late 70’s and the early 80’s found Ashoke Chatterjee at the helm of NID as its Director and he insisted on the use of animation for developmental comminication of a variety of types. He managed to get the Ministry of Health to invest in NID animation abilities and Nina Sabnani produced a series of films on the subject of maturation of the girl child and child birth and the associated health issues. In the 80’s and 90’s animation was used extensively for making many short instructional films for screening at the NID designed theme exhibitions such as the Energy pavilion in 1983 that was headed by Vikas Satwalekar. However in spite of these successful demonstrations funding from Government sources was hard to come by and it was back to education assignments to keep the Oxbury camera busy through the year.

Binita Desai made a presentation about 20 years of NID animation at Chitrakatha 2007 and the link here shows her talk in summary on the blog All About Animation:

The UNDP programme of support for the Institute in late 80’s saw the arrival of some support for the animation programme at NID by way of international consultants and travel and study opportunities for NID faculty. Nina and Binny having joined the faculty were deputed to the UK to study animation under Roger Noake while their initial training was provided by Claire Weeks at NID. After their return Nina and Binny got involved in animation education and in making occasional demonstration films and work on a variety of projects that included animation skills such as the animated symbols for the Doordarshan TV channels. The next generation of students included both those in the Post Graduate programme as well as students for the Under Graduate programme at NID. With the arrival of digital technology in the 90’s the field of animation received a great deal of interest in India and the spread of Television across India also brought in new opportunities for the NID animation students. The music channels provided internship opportunities and soon a flood of employment opportunities came their way and Bombay studios gave many of our students professional placement. The other major employer was the IT interactive media industry that took students for gaming and new media product applications and numerous diploma projects were sponsored by industry and these gave a new edge to the animation activity at the institute. I hope that some of these stories will be documented and shared in the days ahead and I am happy that the two Chitrakatha episodes of 2007 and 2009 have given our alumni a platform to share their journeys.

Image06: Stills from the trailer of “Arjun” an animated feature film being directed and produced in Mumbai by Arnab Choudhury and Pavan Buragohain for the UTV Productions due for release early in 2010.

The NID animation department has produced many champions of Indian animation and their story too needs to be told at some length, hopefully after a good deal of research since there is much to be said here. However I am aware of some of these cases since these students have been in touch with me over the years and I have been watching their progress as young professionals and now as accomplished animators that India has to offer to the world. This group includes many individuals and here I can only mention a few that I am aware of in some detail. They include Prakash Moorthy, Umesh Shukla, Dhimant Vyas, Vaibhav Kumaresh, E Suresh, Arnab Choudhury and Pavan Buragohain. I do hope that the others will share what they are up to these days and tell us about the exciting projects that they have on hand, a bit of which we were able to glimpse during the Chitrakatha 2009 that just concluded at NID between 29th to 31st October 2009. Besides the international presenters from Mexico and China we had some from experts from industry and education from Kolkatta, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. However bulk of the presentations were from the NID graduates who are making waves in India across a number of media sectors from advertising, TV entertainment, game design, childrens animation, edutainment, and most exciting of all mainstream feature length animation due to hit the stands shortly. Student animators too showcased their work across many sectors and entries were screened from many nations during the three days as part of the student competition entries that were judged by a panel of jurors and awarded at the end of the event. Others who came to NID for the event include Sheetal Sudhir and Manish Sehrawat of Channel V and Sanjay Jangir, a recent NID graduate showed his Diploma film that was feated at film festivals in Canada, Switzerland and Japan recently.

Pavan Buragohin on the web link:

A note about the making of “Arjun” screening at NID during the Chitrakatha 2009 that appeared in the Ahmedabad Mirror.

Sanjay Jangir web link for Raah:

Image07: An exhibition about Comic Books on the sidelines of the Chitrakatha 2009 at the NID Gallery and other related events exploring the role of Comics in national education of the future.

While the most exciting presentation for me personally was the screening of the making of “Arjun” which promises to be the first ever full length feature animation film to be produced by a group of NID animators and that too as a fully indigenous production effort. This was particularly interesting since Arnab Choudhury shared the design process and the stages through which the film had to be visualized with the use of live action to discover both characters as well as postures and action sequences, dramatization of the theme and scenes, and the followup articulation with sketches and diagrams of key figures, characters and scenes so that these could be passed on to the production stage in a coherent manner involving a vast group of service providers without compromising the quality and intention of the designers involved. This process promises to create a solid foundation for a vibrant animation industry in India that delivers compelling products instead of just BPO type finishing touches to international producers. Further the quality and impact of the presentation was such that many of us left the auditorium feeling that the team had a Oscar quality film in the making, we wish the team all the very best in the days ahead. NID animation has finally arrived at the national stage and that too with a big bang!! Other young designers are in the ranks and they will be able to dream big and have the conviction to take on the Bollywood producers and money bags who have been sitting on the sidelines so far in the days ahead I am sure. Government of India could do well to find and channel venture funding for the young creative animation producers and this will speed up the process of seeding a fantastic industry based on design talent in India of the future.

I was invited by Sekhar Mukherjee to sit in on a panel discussion on the topic of the role Comic Books in Education in India. The discussions were quite stimuilating and there is indeed a role that Comics will and can play in the days ahead. I mentioned the book by Scott McCloud called “Understanding Comics” which I have been reading with great interest for the theory that it provides us and also about TED talks where Scott McCloud gives us an insight into the world of Comics that is both informative as well as entertaining.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Royal College of Art (RCA): Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Contemporary Influences (Part 3/3)

Royal College of Art and the contemporary Indian designers

Picture: Singanapalli Balaram and his Rural Bicycle designed at the RCA as a student project.

Just as NID had trained the first generation of design teachers for India in the 60’s and 70’s some of these leading teachers and some from the second generation were further trained at the RCA in the 70’s. The first to head to London was Prof Singanapalli Balaram who was deputed from the NID for a year long training at the RCA in 1971. He returned to India and worked at NID till he retired from the Institute after which he has moved to Coimbatore to set up a new school of design there called the DJ Academy.

Singanapalli Balaram, RCA, Industrial Design Engineering, 1971.
Home at DJAD, Coimbatore:
Balaram at DJAD:

The IDC was set up in 1969 by Prof Sudha Nadkarni who himself was a student of Hfg Ulm but his students from IDC went to the RCA in the early 70’s to come back to teach at IDC, IIT Mumbai and at the IIT Delhi where another school of design took root.

Lalit Das, IIT, Delhi (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering from 1972 to 1974)
Biography:

Kirti Trivedi, IDC, IIT Mumbai (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering from 1972 to 1974)
IDC, IIT Mumbai:
Hindu Architecture:
IDC Publications:

K Munshi, IDC, IIT, Mumbai (RCA, School of Industrial Design Engineering in 1974)
Workshop on Product Innovation:

Dhruv Mistry, MA Sculpture RCA 1983
Biography link:

Shilpa Ranade, IDC, IIT, Mumbai Head of Animation at the IDC also stuidied at the RCA.
Interview in Animation Express:

This early round of RCA scholars from India was followed by a stream of very talented designers from NID, most of whom were from the NID’s undergraduate programme and they are listed below with discipline, year and some web links appended below each person.

Picture: Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien at their studio in London

Nipa Doshi, MA (RCA) Furniture, 1997.
British Museum:
John Lobb: Apprentice Shoes:
I.D. Magazine:
Moroso:
Norsk Form:

Nagraj Seshadri, MA (RCA) Industrial Design, 1998.
Core77 1999 Heavyweight Design Champion:
LinkedIn Profile:

Priya Prakash, MA (RCA) Computer Related Design, 2001.
O’Reilly Conference:
Priyascape blog:
Nesta Award:

Diana Irani, MPhil (RCA) Constructed Textiles, 2002.
Constructed Textiles:
Nesta Award:

Pratap Bose, MA Vehicle Design, 2003
RCA Degree Show 2003:
Box Car comment:

Bikram Mittra, MA Design Products, 2007
Bikram Mittra profile:

Animation has been a dominent area of collaboration in recent years. Nina Sabnani participated in the Helen Hamlyn conference for Design for our Future Selves in 2005 and several RCA faculty and students from RCA Animation Department traveled to India and interacted with NID faculty and student teams under an ongoing relationship under an MOU between the two schools.
Helen Hamlyn conference :

Picture: Anab Jain at RCA in 2004

According to Professor Sandra Kemp, Director of Research at the RCA, I quote from her email communication “Our strongest link with NID is through our Animation Department: - the RCA MA Animation course has had a working teaching exchange going for some years now. Over the years several Animation 2nd year students have been in Ahmedabad for 2 week teaching experiences at the NID Animation undergraduate course. All students enjoyed their stay in India a lot and they all came back with valuable experience. In return the MA Animation course had several exchange students on the course, such as Lucky Vakharia in 2007. The Head of Department, Professor Joan Ashworth and the AHRC Research Fellow Deborah Levy have both visited NID to run workshops, along with one of our Visiting Lecturers, Christine Roche. UnQuote

The following NID graduates have done their animation or media related courses from the RCA in recent years.
Sandeep Channarayapatna, MA Animation, 2004
Teheran Film Festival:

Anab Jain, MA Computer Related Design, 2005
Anab Jain website:
Anab Jain RCA portfolio:
Anab Jain's new website

Meghana Bisineer, MA Animation, 2006
Meghana Bisineer resume:
At RCA summer show:

Pooja Pottenkulam, MA Animation, 2006
Pooja Pottenkulam RCA showcase:

Anitha Balachandran, MA Animation, due to graduate 2008

The previous two posts about the linkages with RCA London can be seen here. The Early Years: Linkages with NID & Indian Design and next the Linkages with NID & Indian Design: Major Influences

Design and Media: Producing Meaning for Indian Society

Image: Illustrated frames from an animated film from Auryn, “In Winter Still” directed by Umesh Shukla in the Claude Monet style using specially designed software to tell a moral tale for children.

Design and Media: Producing Meaning for Society
Design as actively is entering every field of human endeavor, or it soon will and the media is discovering it in India as it explodes into our homes and work-places like never before. Simultaneously, all other fields are looking at design with an active interest through numerous new initiatives, and this includes the fields of production of illustration, still image photography, motion pictures & animation for the TV and live action cinema industry in India. Now an even broader arena of moving images that communicate is emerging through our cell phones and digi-pods that we carry around with us all the time, not to mention the browser based flash animations and quicktime productions that has brought the individual from the street, so to speak, to become a producer of these images, and not just a consumer, thanks to Youtube, Flickr, and a host of social networking sites and discussion platforms that dot the internet today..

The media is exploding all around us and the digital wave is aiding the convergence of many distinct media types on a borderless space, which I had talked about on my previous outing with the media moguls at NID. At the conference at NID on 10th December 1999, on the topic of Emerging Media, I had presented a paper titled “Niche Programming: Narrowcasting the Internet”. The TV celebrity, Vikram Chandra, then from Star Network News (now with the NDTV) and a speaker at the conference, whispered into my ears, “Professor, do you really think all this is going to happen soon?” my reply was in the affirmative, and now he is himself heading the web initiative for the NDTV, besides continuing to anchor many news and special interest programmes for broadcast TV in India.

The media is moving from analog to digital and in the process opening up many new opportunities for design interventions both at the professional as well as the level of the am-admi (the man in the street) as we say in India. News and stock market programmes use ticker tapes to provide dynamic data on call and the set top boxes and direct to home offer to blur the distinction between TV and internet, telephone and music videos, besides those new channels of delivery which we are yet to dream of just now. I now have all the options available at my home on the NID campus with telephone, and broadband internet competing for time with the cable network, direct to home satellite TV and radio and the daily newspaper and occasional magazine providing the icing on the media cake that I consume on a daily basis. My stock market investment and my staying in touch with my subject all require the use of these media sources in a selective manner to meet my professional and everyday need. My family too need these resources and in some cases we have simultaneous feeds from multiple sources necessitating multiple access points which are now the order of the day. Multiplicity of media and of demand has triggered a spiral of opportiunities for design interventions since those who wish to reach us are realizing that we have choices and that the remote button will be used unless

Design as a capability lies at the cusp of the manifestation of dreams and intentions in this powerful and lucrative media space, and it is beginning to take centre stage from both art and science, let me explain. While new media was technology driven and experimental cinema was propelled by art and science expressions and research, all these are taking a backseat to the commercial and intentional capabilities of design that can marry both art and science in commercially and socially desirable ways. Of course, our artists will continue to give us their critical perspectives on our life and our times and our scientists on the other hand will continue to search for new truths, while design will learn to use these to communicate and to tell stories in new and increasingly effective ways. In the final analysis it is the compelling presence of the message in a particular context that makes these offerings so effective and necessary.

Image: Media clips from the scrap book on Indian designer Rajiv Sethi

For instance, new opportunities for powerful expressions exist in the reconstructions of major news driven events, from bank heists to public executions, celebrity cavalcade routes to sports analysis tools (cricket – tennis – swimming….stop action, motion capture and display tools, to name just a few possibilities) to the capture of the spread of fire on the oil rig and the 9/11 type reconstructions for the evening news, all of which are designed offerings, across many competing media, all the time, OK 24x7….Illustration, live action, animation and storytelling, interviews providing facts and expressive fiction with hyper-reality in TV space, all use design capabilities. After an effective entry into the TV space we now see design literally invading Bollywood, Tollywood and our Southern bastions of cinema, the biggest in the world. Hollywood and the West, by the way, is already taken, witness Saul Bass, the famous Graphic Designer of the 70’s and the big budget design promos and trailers for all major offerings from the West, design is an integral part of that offering. This assault is not restricted to production design, costumes and pre-release advertising, but is extending to visual scripting, storyboarding and direction, and in other instances to special effects and animations for stunts, special equipment and props, the Bond cars and gadgets and Free Willie the whale, software for compositing and new business models for the delivery of media content through all available and competing channels, the opportunities are growing exponentially.

From my vantage as a design teacher at NID I see many of our alumni entering the moving picture space through a variety of opportunities that are opening up for trained designers. A quick online query on the “designindia” discussion list has shown very interesting convergences of many design specialists heading for these media opportunities, at a very high level of performance, located in Hyderabad and Mumbai, Dubai and Hong Kong. TV advertising and documentary production used to be the traditional spaces for design and designer action, but now it is being extended to feature films and animations, as the industry gets organized and broader at the base. Product, Furniture and Exhibition designers are working on production design in the TV and film industry. Textile and Apparel designers in costumes and Graphic designers in Art Direction and storyboarding and our Animators are expanding their reach from the short comics and single concept films to feature length stories and documentaries for global partners, special effects and a combination of live and animated offerings. There is a lot of creative trespassing going on here, since digital tools have lowered the entry barrier and the inherent core design skills of visualization and synthesis, capabilities of all designers can now be mobilized through the common sets of software skills that cut across many design disciplines today.

Image: Web site snapshot from Corcoise Films Pvt Ltd with showreel links from ace designer Prasoon Pandey

Design visualization skills are being sought after by both advertising and feature film makers to create expressive visual storyboards that can bring a whole creative and production team up to steam very quickly on the intentions of the producers and directors, and the cost saving and effectiveness of this tool is very convincing indeed. Converting a verbal script into a visual storyboard is not just an artistic interpretation of the record but it would include key decisions such as the selection of locations and frame angles that are viable and effective for the actors and stunt scenes, give cues for costumes, sets and trolley and camera movements, a right-hand support for the director-producer, who would take the final decision call in all cases. Surely this requires more designerly capabilities, both cognitive and effective capabilities, than just the skill of good drawing. Understanding structure and form as a composite whole in the production of meaning is central to the effectiveness of the exercise.

The design intention would be to tell a story in the most effective manner, which would suit the particular context and the occasion. Story telling in culture contributes to the expressions of that culture and Gilles Fauconnier’s, concepts of conceptual blends and fields, provides us tools for the creation of new structures for storytelling and games design. This is in a way similar to the masterful analysis by Levi Strauss when he de-coded the myths of many tribal communities and showed us the similarities and differences, the symmetries and dualities inherent in these myths. Today NID animators and game designers are exploring the use of these structural diagrams, models and scenarios, that can capture the core of a virtual landscape to help maintain continuity in the fictional characters in an equally fictional spaces that they inhabit. A formulae that is successful will be revisited by many with new forms of expression while the underlying structure is faithfully replicated, the Ram Lila being revisited in all our villages across that land, each in its own regional variant, as a case in point.

Raw & the Cooked, structuralist stories and myths from Claude Levi Straus, demonstrate that stories have structure and that stories have form. The great Bollywood imitations of the Hollywood movies, adopts the structure and customizes the form to suit the local context. The Bollywood movies that imitate its own success formulaes, all in new forms and with new players or actors, dubbed in language and with new songs …… many possibilities, hundreds of offerings each day, round the year. Many aspects that are copied are action sequences and interesting structural relationships and these can be easily managed in the digital form, by the use of templates, like in PowerPoint presentation made by managers, but effective in the hands of a master storyteller. The new digital form of entertainment can have mix and match (like fashion street) and offer many possibilities, using the same successful formulae each time in a new way. With the use of motion capture and digital models used for the generation of the story and using a range of optional actors, all digital models that perform to the script and motion capture sequences that are computer mediated, a new masala mix in cinema is possible. Jackie Chan being replaced by Amitabh Bachan, or Chun win Fat, whoever that may be, depending on the audience, a new form of visual translation for the 24x7 world of localized TV content, mix and match, direct to home? All new opportunities that is just now at the horizon but soon inside our homes, for sure. These can be designed and delivered with imagination and great power when it is handled well.

Very soon we can imagine and expect to see content of the great cultures being reinterpreted in the media by audience choice, as in text being converted to image in the comic books and moving image with action sequences and music videos, just as text is converted to voice with the now effective text to speech software programmes. As we understand structure better and figure out new forms of expression, we will or can have automated stories on call, with actors of our choice and with twists and turns as dictated by the viewer, a totally non-linear offering. These are already here with us in the form of the digital games that children and adults play all day, offline as well as offline in great multi-player environments that unfold as the game progresses, never to be repeated in the storytelling traditions of yore. This emergent form is like the video game and the child and playing adult are actually manipulating the course of the story with dynamic animations and with deep immersion in the game play all the time. These interactive games hold the seeds of a new genre of interactive cinema that will be upon us through our cell phones and our other media access devices, very soon indeed. The “Cell phone cinema” of low-resolution storytelling, and home movie editing, the Indian MMS craze. Wapp, rapp and zapp, Bluetooth dating and digital flirting, are all here to stay. Some of these will be used to sell us credit cards and insurance, or toothpaste and adhesives, or entertain us round the clock, online, offline, at home and elsewhere.

"Design and Moving Image: Let the Twain Meet", was the title of my “Cut Here” paper of 2005. Design as we know it today is unfolding to new levels of understanding from which it can help us communicate both the trivial and the profound, and our value systems will dictate how we will eventually use these capabilities for a sustainable future. When the world is shrinking and as Mike Davis tells us, it is becoming a global slum, we need to use the media to address these dimensions like never before, and in my view the effective communicator with leadership qualities is the challenge of the day. Design at this level is very political indeed. Designers need to learn about politics or our politicians will need to learn to use design a whole lot better. I wonder which one will come first.

Based on paper for “Cut Here” Journal of NID, August 2005 and revised in May 2008. Download pdf file 68 kb from here.

Download the copy of the journal "Cut Here" issue No 4 pdf file 2.94 mb