‘Hello English’ was a series of films to teach spoken English to non-English speaking children in government schools of Karnataka. Challenge lay in the fact that English, as a language was completely alien to these children! The programme was one of a kind: no one had yet attempted to do a televised lesson plan for primary school children in India, especially for teaching language.

I was to design a short animated clip(s) and/or illustration inserts as a part of these films. The films dealt with constituting some inputs of grammar into lessons. However, during the project I found myself juggling a variety of roles: from script-writing, handling production (of the live action bits), research assistant and part-academician.

Post shooting we realised that though the activities encouraged the children to participate, learn and use the concepts, they did not serve well to introduce them; there had to be some visual references that would attempt to contextualise and teach the same. Also, despite repeated explanations and several takes, the children (involved in the shoot) had just barely learnt a couple of words (in the actual sense of learning!) This only re-emphasised the need to establish context (visually) for the children to comprehend what the words meant. This could be best done by an animator /illustrator, and this is where I fit in.

The project taught me to give way to practical ideas rather than indulgent schemes, managing on stringent budgets, handling difficult-to-please clients and overall planning.