Arena Animation - Kesavadasapuram

Arena Animation to offer B.Sc. in Multimedia & Animation Program in association with MS University

2009-05-21T01:02:00.001-07:00

Trivandrum - May 20, 2009: Arena Animation, the global leader in hi-end Animation & Multimedia Training will now offer a B.Sc. Degree in Multimedia and Animation, in coordination with Manonmaniam Sundaranar University (MS University) at its centre at Kesavadasapuram.

The course curriculum would include all modules from Arena Animation's flagship program - Arena Animation Academy Specialist Program (AAASP), and four mandatory modules from MS University viz. English Language, an elective 2^nd Language, as listed in the university prospectus and 2 papers of Soft Skills.

Speaking at the Press Conference, Mr. Easo Thampy Mathew, General Manager & Zonal Sales Head, Aptech Limited, said "Multimedia & Animation is one of the fastest growing and high paying career options today. The demand for animators has increased greatly due to fast-paced developments in sectors like high-tech digital media and 3D animation. A university Degree in Multimedia & Animation backed by Arena's expertise and experience of 13 years in disseminating quality training across 15 countries makes it a power packed combination which will enhance the employability of the students manifold, opening up a world of opportunities for them in this sphere."

The newly-launched joint-program will be made available across-the-country at select Arena Animation centres. Arena Animation - Kesavadasapuram Centre is one of these select centres where this program will be offered. This is the first of its kind in Trivandrum.

Arena will follow the SILM (Students Integrated Learning Model) for the training. It will be a three year MSU course, with 120 credits as per University norms. All the examinations will be conducted online facilitated by Aptech Ltd.

About Manonmaniam Sundaranar University (MSU):

Manonmaniam Sundaranar University was established in 1990, as per the Act 31 of 1990 by the Government of Tamil Nadu, as a Teaching-cum-affiliating University. It is recognized by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

About eighty thousand students are studying in the various University Departments and the eighty affiliated colleges including two constituent colleges. MSU is one of the pioneer institutions that offers Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS). The courses and research programmes offered by the University have been carefully chosen after considering the contemporary times. The University Departments offer M. Phil and Ph.D Programmes (Full time and Part time) in addition to regular P. G. Programmes.

For further information please visit www.msuniversity.org.in

Mr. Shyamal Das Gupta, Territory Academic Head, South & West, Mr. Vinod Kumar Area Sales Head, Mr. Arunkumar, Chief Executive, Arena Animation Kesavadasapuram participated in the Press Conference.

The making of vodafone zoozoo...

2009-05-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

Some out of the basket thought process………………. Facts & Snaps of Vodafone Adv – ZOOZOO character in its making.

“The design of the characters is such that one gets fooled into thinking it is animation,” shrugs Rao, which was indeed the very illusion that had to be created. “In a sense, it is ‘live’ animation!” he quips, referring to the fact that it was all shot live.

Prakash Varma, ad filmmaker, Nirvana Films, has directed the commercials, and reveals that the Zoozoos were a big challenge to create. The practical aspects of how they will move, talk, gesticulate and emote were very important. Essentially, costume design and artwork were crucial elements.

“It took me three weeks of pre-production to understand how it will work,” says Varma. There were two fabrics that were considered for the body suits, and one was rejected for it had too many wrinkles and was shiny. The wrinkles would have shown when the characters moved, thereby shattering the illusion of animation. “So we chose the more practical, thicker fabric,” Varma explains.

The production team divided the outfit into two parts: the body and the head. The body part of the outfit was stuffed with foam in some places, while the head was attached separately. To make it look bigger than a human head, a harder material called Perspex was used, which in turn was stuffed with foam (with scope for ventilation).

If one wishes to understand the size of this head, here’s a fact: a human head would typically reach up to the mouth level of this giant Zoozoo head. “We kept the hands and legs thin, which is why we cast women – and occasionally children – wearing the costumes,” says Varma. The thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans. Sets were created to suit the size of the Zoozoos.
Cinematically, this ‘size’ was a trick: the creatures look smaller than they actually are on screen, to portray a different world of sorts. For this, the speed of shooting was altered: Nirvana shot it in a high-speed format to make them look the size that they do.
Furthermore, simple sets/backdrops were created and spray painted with neutral Greys – a colour of choice so that attention isn’t diverted from the main characters. For a supposedly ‘outdoor’ shot, even the shadow of a Zoozoo was kept ‘live’ and not done in post production: it was painted in a darker shade of grey on the ground. An even lighting was maintained throughout.
There was virtually no post production work done.
The films were shot by Nirvana in Cape Town, South Africa, with the help of a local production house there, called Platypus. Incidentally, the same combination of people also worked on the ‘Happy to Help’ series last year. When asked whether Cape Town is fast becoming a tourist spot for Vodafone and Nirvana, Varma laughs, saying, “Oh no! It’s just that we are very comfortable with the team there and know what sort of work to expect from them.”
Nagpal adds here that the production cost had to be minimal for unveiling such a large number of commercials. “Otherwise, our production costs would exceed media spends,” he quips

Pixar to open Vancouver studio

2009-05-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

VANCOUVER - Pixar Animation, one of the world’s leading computer animators and a multi-Academy Award winning studio, will build a 20,000-square-foot facility in Vancouver to produce its popular short features.

Walt Disney Studios, with whom Pixar merged in 2006, is scouting locations in the city, concentrating on the downtown area. It hopes to have the new studio up and running by this fall.

The studio will hire 75 to 100 people, most of them Canadians, and will make all of Pixar’s three-dimensional, computer-animated short films, which usually run three to five minutes. All Pixar theatrical features will continue to be made at its main studio in Emeryville, Calif., which employs almost 900.

Pixar has grown from a small studio making award-winning computer-generated short animations — Luxo Jr. (1986), the tale of a small desk lamp which, when shown in theatres, got as much buzz as the feature it preceded, and the Oscar-winning Tin Toy (1988) were its first titles — to a large operation which has produced nine major animated features: Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and Wall-E. A 10th feature, Up, will be released on May 29.

The company’s most popular short features include Knick Knack (the story of a snowman stuck in a snow globe), One Man Band (about fiercely competitive street performers), and Presto (a hapless magician frustrated by an unfed rabbit).

The company uses short films as springboards for its feature animations, and that will be the role of the Vancouver studio. A Pixar short takes six to 12 months to produce, and the production team can range anywhere from 20 to 75 people.

Pixar will not be the city’s biggest studio. Rainmaker Entertainment, which houses Rainmaker Animation, has 75,000 square feet at its two buildings, and employs 250 to 400 people, depending on the production cycle.

Arena brings International Animation & Gaming Evangelist to Kochi

2009-05-05T02:56:00.000-07:00

Kochi: May 5, 2009: Ian Livingstone world renowned animation and gaming expert, will be in Kochi, to present Perspectives, a seminar on ‘Animation in India: Future & Careers’. Perspectives is a series of nation-wide seminars, organized by Arena Animation, 5 global leader in hi-end animation training.Perspectives will be held in Kochi on 6th May, 2009 at Sree Rama varma Club Hall, D.H. Road, Ernakulum from 11 am to 1 pm. Livingstone has been invited to India to present a series of nation-wide seminars and also to felicitate winners of ‘Golden Cursor Animation Awards,’ which is scheduled on 8th May, 2009 in Mumbai. Ian Livingstone, Co-founder of Games Workshop was awarded with BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards for outstanding contribution to the community and Order of the British Empire, for "Services to the Computer Games Industry" in 2006.

COMING SOON......"the Hounted Village"

2009-05-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

Adobe illustrator - Works Of the Week

2009-04-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

A short Flash animation.

2009-04-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

A Short Animation done by AHAMMED MUAZ using Flash.

ARENA Launching BSc. Degree in Multimedia & Animation

2009-04-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

Arena Animation, the global leader in high-end Animation & Multimedia Training will now offer a B.Sc. Degree in Multimedia and Animation, in coordination with Manonmaniam Sundaranar University (MS University). A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to this effect was signed between Arena Animation and MS University today in Chennai.

The course curriculum would include all modules from Arena Animation’s flagship program – Arena Animation Academy Specialist Program (AAASP), and four mandatory modules from MS University viz. English Language, an elective 2nd Language, as listed in the university prospectus and 2 papers of Soft Skills.

2D Vs 3D Animation

2009-04-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

2D Animation. 2D software uses images called bitmaps that consist of blocks of color stacked together to make a picture. The limitation is that only one angle can be seen at any given time.

3D Animation. 3D software uses computer-generated lines, surfaces, or solids to create 3 dimensional models. It is also a more difficult technique to perfect.
What It Means. While 3D animation gives a better image, cost and time constraints make 2D techniques a bit more attractive for most budgets.

The jury is still out on the full conversion of 2D animation to 3D, and there are strong opinions from users. Here are some of the characteristics of both types of animation that have Internet surfers and gamers talking.

Popular Opinion
Introspective. The introspective aspect of 3D animation allows you to change your point of view within a given scenario. This is what gives 3D its “realistic” perspective when viewed in video and computer games.

Extraspective. In 2D animation, the extraspective aspect removes you from the scenario and presents the virtual environment as a layered stack of images. This is similar to the way you would see in a book.

Transition. Most viewers appreciate a combination of both 3D and 2D styles in order to maximize the artistic truth and freedom of movement and sensation.

The bottom line is that, despite the advancement of 3D animation technologies, 2D will still have a place in the equation for some time. There’s just too much to be missed by sticking with one environment over the other.

'creativze' New Project Released

2009-04-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

CREATIVZE is the group of ten talented multimedia students in Kesavadasapuram Arena Animation . For every CREATIVZE member you can find good quality and perfection in all thier works if it is in Graphic designing, web designing, video editing, animation or in 3d modelling.
Team : creativze
team Members: Sumeesh S, Jasim A, pratheeshnath R B, Rahul Anand, Riju balan, Vipin V ,Renjith R R, Sandeep V M, Deepan M And Shaji S.

Project Duration: 15 Days.
Software: Maya 2008

Build Your Own Animation Workstation

2009-04-08T01:19:00.000-07:00

do it! Run for your life!! Save yourself while you still can!!! Go on without me . . .

Are they gone now? Good. Okay, now that the sensible people have left, it's just us lunatics. While they're off buying boring, old pre-built computers – what with all their warranties and tech support – you and I are gonna throw caution into the wind and make ours from scratch. We'll buy a bunch of shiny computer parts, throw 'em into a box, shake it around a little and blam!, we'll have home-brewed a monster animation rig.

Let's clarify some things first. There aren't too many folks building their own Macs and SGIs. So what I'm talking about here is a Windows or Linux box. Now, Linux is fun to say, but I honestly know next to nothing about it, what I'm really talking about is an Intel or AMD based Windows box.

Second clarification. What's an animation workstation? Well, garden-variety PCs are general purpose computers. When you put high-end parts in them that are geared toward a specific task, those PCs get the much cooler-sounding moniker: "workstation." In our case, that specific task set is animation – 3D, 2D, compositing and a little video editing.

Building the animation workstation is a multi-phase process:
1. Select components
2. Assemble them
3. Install an operating system
4. Install software.

Selecting Components
Animation workstations generally have state-of-the-art components compared to the basic family PC. (Although a PC built for 3D gaming will share many traits of a good workstation.) Few tasks tax a machine quite like hardcore 3D graphics and video editing do. All of the subsystems, such as storage, data transfer, CPU, RAM and graphics, work very, very hard to keep the beautiful pictures looking good and moving fast on-screen.

Here is a roundup of the parts you'll need to select. I'll even throw in some highly subjective opinions on specific parts. This is sure to spawn many angry emails, and be out-dated within minutes of press time, but what the heck.


Coolermaster's CM-330 will house your wares efficiently and with style.

Case
The enclosure is what you'll put all this other stuff into, so you might as well make it a good one. If you're like me, you'll end up upgrading your workstation, instead of buying a whole new computer every few years. The case is the one part you may never need to replace, because it's just the guts that will change.

Get a mid- to full-sized ATX tower. You want lots of room to root around in, and you may need the extra drive bays someday. Spend the extra money for a quality case, too. The cheap ones don't have rolled edges on their internal, stamped metal parts. This can make for some awful lacerations. I learned that the hard way. Bleeding all over a $250 CPU is a bad thing.

Most cases come with a power supply, but you want to make sure that it's rated high enough to provide power to all of your internal components. A 350 -to- 450 watt, P4 ready or Athlon rated power supply is a necessary investment. Underpowering your system can be harmful. I use the Silencer 400 ATX from PC Power & Cooling. Other good brands are Enermax and Antec.

Monitor
There are a few issues to consider when choosing your monitor: CRT vs. LCD, size and quality. Oh, and of course, price.

CRT technology is the TV-style, picture tube monitor we are most familiar with. LCD technology is the active-matrix, laptop screen broken out onto the desktop. In general, CRTs are still the best bet for animation. They are capable of higher contrast and have more resolution choices than LCD panels. LCDs are not yet up to the visual standards of CRTs, although their low power consumption, small footprint and overall sex appeal make them quite tempting.

You can never have too much screen real estate. A 19" CRT is pretty good, 20"-21" is better. Sony makes a wide aspect-ratio, 24" CRT that is beautiful. Remember, the larger the screen, the bigger and heavier the monitor. Most large CRTs need a pretty deep desk to sit on. One note about LCDs: A 17" LCD is the equivalent of a 19" CRT.

The quality of the monitor is a very important consideration. Most manufacturers have a "graphics professional" or "CAD" line of monitors that is worth checking out. Look for a perfectly flat screen, a dot pitch of .22mm to .25mm (this is how densely packed the pixels are), and a good overall picture. It is important either to see monitors in person or read lots of reviews from trusted sources.

Monitor recommendations: IBM P260, ViewSonic PF815, Sony GDM FW900, iiyama Vision Master Pro 512.


AMD phenom vs. The Intel Core 2 Extreme: Both are fast.

CPU
Since the CPU is the "brain" of your workstation, it is one of the key selections you will have to make before choosing other components. Your motherboard and RAM choices will depend largely on which CPU you get.

The choice here is between Intel and AMD lineups. They are pretty comparable; people have great success with both of them.

Motherboard
Based on your choice of CPU, you will now need to pick a compatible motherboard (also called the mainboard). This is determined by the motherboard's chipset and socket configuration. You can't put a P4 CPU into a motherboard built for an Athlon XP, and vice versa.

Other features to pay attention to: You'll want a fast front-side bus speed (this is the speed at which data shuttles around) like 100Mhz, many open RAM slots, a bunch of PCI slots (5-6 is good) for different upgrade cards, and a heavy-duty AGP Pro slot for your graphics card.

Motherboard recommendations: Asus P4T-E, AOpen AK 73 Pro, Soyo SY-K7V Dragon.

RAM
System memory (RAM) is yet another part of the CPU/motherboard choice equation. Once you've made those decisions, the RAM will pretty much pick itself for you. For an animation workstation you will want a minimum of 2Gb of RAM. 3-4 GB is even better.

Memory recommendations: Crucial, Rambus, Corsair, Kingston.

Storage

The amount and speed of your hard drives will play a large role in the overall animation pipeline. When texture maps are pulled into RAM, rendered frames are stored, or video streams during playback, it is your hard drive that is working overtime. The bandwidth available for such data transfer is dependent on the interface between drive and motherboard, while the speed of the drive platters themselves is measured in revolutions per minute (RPMs).

The SATA interface is just right for the job. It is capable of very fast, sustained data transfer, and is fun to say! Make sure that your motherboard can support the interface standard you want to use.,

Drives that spin at 7200, 10,000 or 15,000RPMs are your best choice. Anything slower will create a data bottleneck. The size of the drives can have an impact on speed as well. A couple of 18GB drives is a better choice than one 36GB drive. In order to work most efficiently, it is a good idea to have one hard drive for your operating system (9GB), one for your applications (18GB-36GB) and a larger, cheaper one for storage (40GB-80GB).

Hard drive recommendations:
SATA Seagate 500 Gb sata 2

Pros use powerful graphic cards like this Quadro Fx 5600

Graphics Card

If you are planning to run any 3D animation software effectively on your workstation, you'll want to invest in a professional-level OpenGL graphics card. These are the AGP Pro slot sittin', giant heat sink wearin', 128MB of onboard RAM bearin' monsters. The faster the graphics card, the easier it is to do your work. The cards to look for are the Wildcats, FireGLs, Quadros and Oxygens. While you can spend less on a gaming card like the GeForce3 and GeForce4, you will need to jump through some hoops and workarounds to get the most out of your 3D package.

If you plan on using dual monitors, be sure to check that your graphics card can support that. It is much easier to get one card that'll drive twin displays than it is to install two graphics cards in one system.

Flash Work

2009-02-25T05:15:00.000-08:00

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NVIDIA Introduces Quadro CX - The Accelerator For Adobe Creative Suite 4

2009-02-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

NVIDIA today introduced its new accelerator for Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 software, the NVIDIA® Quadro® CX . This new GPU provides creative professionals with a faster, better, more reliable way to maximize their creativity. Quadro CX was architected to deliver the best performance for the new GPU-optimized features of Adobe Creative Suite 4

“Adobe is at the forefront of the Visual Computing Revolution,” said Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVDIA. “CS4’s GPU features are sending shockwaves through the creative industry.”

“Photoshop users are always looking for maximum performance, and we recognized that tapping into the power of the GPU is one way to give it to them,” said Kevin Connor, vice president of product management for Professional Digital Imaging at Adobe. “Thanks to NVIDIA’s efforts to optimize the Quadro CX product for CS4, users can be assured of a dramatically fast and fluid experience on tasks such as panning, zooming, and rotating large images as well as manipulating 3D content.”

NVIDIA specifically designed and optimized the Quadro CX to enhance the performance of Adobe Creative Suite 4 product line and meet the unique needs of the Creative Suite 4 professional. Adding NVIDIA Quadro CX to the pipeline gives creative professionals a faster, better, and more reliable experience. With NVIDIA Quadro CX users can encode H.264 videos at lightning-fast speeds with the NVIDIA CUDA™-enabled plug-in for Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4, RapiHD™ from Elemental Technologies; accelerate rendering time for advanced effects; and accurately preview what deliverables will look like with 30-bit color or uncompressed 10-bit/12-bit SDI before final outputⁱ.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 software now has added optimization to take advantage of GPU technology, including the parallel processing capability in the Quadro CX GPU. These enhancements accelerate a number of visually intensive operations, including:

Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 uses the NVIDIA Quadro CX GPU to bring unprecedented fluidity to image navigation. The GPU enables real-time image rotation, zooming, and panning, and makes changes to the view instantaneous and smooth. Adobe Photoshop CS4 also taps the GPU for on-screen compositing of both 2D and 3D content, ensuring smoothly anti-aliased results regardless of zoom level. Brush resizing and brushstroke preview, 3D movement, high-dynamic-range tone mapping, and color conversion are also accelerated by the GPU.
Adobe After Effects® CS4 now has added optimization features to accelerate a variety of creative effects, making it easier than ever to add graphics and visual effects to video, which allows the artist to quickly move from concept to final product and speeds up the workflow. Effects accelerated include depth of field, bilateral blur effects, turbulent noise such as flowing water or waving flags, and cartoon effects. NVIDIA Quadro CX takes advantages of these workflow enhancements.
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 can take advantage of Quadro CX to accelerate high-quality video effects such as motion, opacity, color, and image distortion. Quadro CX also enables faster editing of multiple high-definition video streams and graphic overlays and provides a variety of video output choices for high-quality preview, including DisplayPort, component TV, or uncompressed 10-bit or 12-bit SDI.

What Is Animation

2009-01-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

Animation is a type of optical illusion. It involves the appearance of motion caused by displaying still images one after another. Often, animation is used for entertainment purposes.

In addition to its use for entertainment, animation is considered a form of art. It is often displayed and celebrated in film festivals throughout the world. Also used for educational purposes, animation has a place in learning and instructional applications as well.

Cartoon animation is often considered to be animation in its classic form. The animated cartoon made its debut in the early part of the 20th century and calls for the use of 24 different drawings per second. In traditional animated cartoons, frames are hand drawn.

Animation is both time-consuming and costly to produce. For this reason, most of the animation made for television and film is produced by professorial studios. However, there are also many independent studios. In fact, there are many resources, such as lower-cost animation programs and distribution networks, that make the work of the independent animator much easier than it was in the past.

When animation is used for films or movies, each frame is produced on an individual basis. Frames can be produced using computers or photographs of images that are either drawn or painted. Frames can also be generated by altering a model unit in small ways and using a special camera to take pictures of the results. No matter what method is used, the film or movie that results fools the eye into seeing continuous movement.

Persistence of vision is often projected as the reason the eyes can be fooled into seeing continuous movement that isn't really happening. Basically, the brain and the eyes cooperate, storing images for a mere fraction of a second. Minor jumps or blips are automatically smoothed out by the brain. Since animation frames are shot at very fast rates, most individuals see the movement without stoppages.

Keep in mind that persistence of vision is a theory and not a proven concept. Many film academics and theorists accept its relevance to animation. However, there are some scientists that call the theory a complete myth.

Though the work of producing animated movies and cartoons can be intense and laborious, computer animation can make the process much faster. Computer technology is steadily improving, and professionals are able to create life-like characters using computers and special animation software. However, skilled animators are still necessary for producing quality animations. After all, computers are not yet capable of making artistic choices and bringing real passion to simple images.