The nuts and bolts of animation
LIZA GEORGE
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Sajan Skaria is the technical director of `Cars' and `Finding Nemo.'
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We give it expressions, movements, emotions...
IN TOP GEAR: Sajan Skaria.
Sajan Skaria, technical director of `Cars,' which may motor its way to the Oscars, is indeed in the fast lane of animation.
Perhaps the only Malayali working at Pixar, the company that has churned out computer graphic animation wonders such as `Toy Story' and `Monster Inc,' Sajan has worked on Pixar's `Finding Nemo' and `Cars.'
As technical director, Sajan breathes life into characters. "We give it expressions, movements, emotions... " says Sajan who was in Thiruvananthapuram for a break.
Attention to detail
`Cars.'
Dwelling upon his work in `Cars,' Sajan says, " `Cars' has more detail than many other Pixar movies; attention been given to minute features like the nuts and bolts of the cars."
Capturing the eyes was a challenge. "When you draw eyes, you tend to draw two circles. However on a windshield, one eye tends to look larger than the other. We had to create a special camera to get them right, " he says.
Released in June this year, `Cars' is a fast-paced comedy adventure set inside the world of automobiles. Tremendous research goes into the making of an animation film. "The art directors and at times the animators spend time going through various materials and resources. In `Finding Nemo,' they went scuba diving to get a feel of the ocean while in `Cars,' they hit the race track."
For Sajan, having worked with John Lasseter, director of `Toy Story' and `Cars' was a great experience. "John is equivalent to the Walt Disney of this age. He is so thorough in his work." Meeting the renowned Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazak is another high in his life.
Sajan is now busy with another Pixar project called `Ratatouille.' "It is about a rat who lives in a Parisian restaurant."
`Cars.'
So, how does he see the future of animation in India?
"We have creative hands but we tend to ape the west. Capes and rippling muscles do not suit us. Take a local Malayali, have him wearing a dhoti, and give him superpowers; someone people can relate too and laugh along with. Another essential quality is patience. At Pixar, we draw and re-draw and re-draw till it comes out perfect at the fiftieth try. Take `Cars' for instance, it was in production for five years. In India we rush and make a cartoon at the first try. We do not aim at perfection," says Sajan who began drawing cartoons as a kid.
It was an accident that got Sajan cartooning. The accident resulted in a fractured leg and three months of bed rest. After his parents K. Skaria and Thankamma went to work, Sajan spent the day drawing to his heart's content. A great fan of cartoonist Ajith Ninan who had a cartoon strip in a children's magazine called Target, Sajan tried to replicate the images on paper. Although the software engineer from Regional Engineering College, Calicut (National Institute of Technology) worked in Bangalore, for a couple of years, Sajan found that it was not his calling. As he wanted to pursue his love for drawing, a post-graduate course in computer graphics at Viz Lab, Texas A&M University in the United States seemed the right choice.
Realising his ambition
Stills of `Finding Nemo'.
Says Sajan, "My dream was to make it to Disney, but when I was in the U.S, Pixar was coming up. Their `Toy Story' had hit the screen and I realised Pixar was where I ought to be," says Sajan who joined the company in 2000.
After in-house training, Sajan started work on `Finding Nemo' and `Cars.' While it was more of creating the special effects in Nemo, in `Cars' he worked on car characters such as Sally and Fillmore and "a bit of Sarge and the other cars," he says. How did he feel when `Finding Nemo' won the Oscar for the best animation feature in 2004? " I was on top of the world."
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