My project brief was to make a 30-60 second animation film for television, targeting children in the age group of 2-8 yrs.

India is a veritable conglomeration of ethnicities and cultures, and each and every culture has its own traditional lore of storytelling. In the 21st century itself, new forms of storytelling have pervaded people’s lives. The television as part of the media is our modern day storyteller, the manipulator of minds; responsible for creating and propagating ideas in people’s minds.

One has to keep in mind the following aspects while making a film for children: work from a child’s perspective, stick to a single topic or theme, let simplicity be your guide, provide age-appropriate content, feature children from the target audience, present positive models, tell a good story, consider the implicit social messages, limit the number of people featured, and use music to reinforce and engage.

A thirty second spot is challenging in the sense that the director has to say all within that segment of time, without missing out any vital points of communication. It has to have superb recall value; otherwise it will not stand out in the barrage of images we get on the TV every day. Animation is a flexible medium useful for presenting a range of concepts from the most concrete to the most imaginative. Animation’s strength is its visual language which goes beyond the physical bounds imparted by live action and studio segments.