Watch | A new generation of Indian animators is elevating the art form

Watch | How animation is changing in India

Animators across the world have been working against the odds and the same holds true for India: underpaid, their work relegated to the sidelines, and so-called experts assuming that animators cannot be considered in the same pantheon as our greatest storytellers.

While Will Smith’s slapgate controversy overshadowed nearly every frame of the Oscars ceremony last year, for animators it was offensive for a wholly ignored reason. Before presenting Encanto the award for Best Animated Feature, the presenters Lily James, Naomi Scott and Halle Bailey joked that animation was just for kids. Even host Amy Schumer added her two bits about animated movies and said: “The only one I’ve seen is Encanto because of my kid.”

“Animation is cinema,” says Debjyoti Saha, a 28-year-old animation filmmaker and the founder of Goppo Animation in Kolkata. “For years, the audience in general has viewed animation as content limited to a certain age level, mostly for comic relief. As the world is changing and the avenues are increasing, the motive is to change this perception by addressing stories in various contexts and aspects.”

Saha’s versatile portfolio shows the stunning range of what the art form can do: the grunge, monochromatic animation punctuated with splashes of yellow in the music video for Prabh Deep’s ‘Chitta’, w hich satirises drug abuse; the animated title sequence showing a spirited women’s race in the Netflix film Looop Lapeta; and the music video of DIVINE’s ‘Mera Bhai’. “Every story needs to be treated differently and that is the reason why we exist in the first place,” he says. “So, narratives drive my style. After all, there are some radical ideas that can only be executed in animation.”

Read the full story here:  How animation is changing in India 

Production: Surya Praphulla Kumar