The Animation Workshop to recreate Verrier Elwin as a presenter for a series of short animated adaptations of tribal folktales is officially drawing to a close.  The team that have come from various parts of the country have been at the Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar for three weeks, and they have managed to work out how the animated sequences will work, what needs to be done and how it will be done.  They have made a storyboard which depicts each shot, so as to determine the continuity.  One of them, a young Garo artist from Meghalaya called Arak Sangma not only designed the Elwin character, but also created all the additional artwork required for the shots:  the scenes will take place in a tribal forest composed from artwork that was created for the series by several Pardhan Gond artists from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, last year.

The sequences that are now being worked on link the collection of five animated films together.

Dr Verrier Elwin was an eminent anthropologist and visionary who made a huge contribution to the knowledge about tribal cultures in India, and now he will introduce the folktales to wider audiences and invite them to vote and choose their favorite, as this is a storytelling competition.  The prize is to be a Trophy for the story that gets the most votes from young audiences across the country, and particularly in the areas from where the stories originate.

Dr Elwin died in 1964, having spent most of his life working for the social benefit of the tribes in India.  During the latter part of his life, he did receive acknowledgment for his work, and he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1961.  He was not one for preserving tribal cultures and keeping them as they were; as he said himself, his approach to life was dynamic. If only he had been around today to see the project that his work has inspired, he would undoubtedly have been excited by it.

Reading from The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin (1964: 303):

"We should lay much greater stress on the possibility of the tribal people helping us. At present all the emphasis is on our helping them.  Let us teach them that their own culture, their own arts are precious things that we respect and need. When they feel they can make a contribution to their country, they will feel a part of it: this is therefore an important aspect of their integration." 

The Animation Workshop to recreate Verrier Elwin as a presenter for a series of short animated adaptations of tribal folktales is officially drawing to a close.  The team that have come from various parts of the country have been at the Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar for three weeks, and they have managed to work out how the animated sequences will work, what needs to be done and how it will be done.  They have made a storyboard which depicts each shot, so as to determine the continuity.  One of them, a young Garo artist from Meghalaya called Arak Sangma not only designed the Elwin character, but also created all the additional artwork required for the shots:  the scenes will take place in a tribal forest composed from artwork that was created for the series by several Pardhan Gond artists from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, last year.

The sequences that are now being worked on link the collection of five animated films together.
Dr Verrier Elwin was an eminent anthropologist and visionary who made a huge contribution to the knowledge about tribal cultures in India, and now he will introduce the folktales to wider audiences and invite them to vote and choose their favorite, as this is a storytelling competition.  The prize is to be a Trophy for the story that gets the most votes from young audiences across the country, and particularly in the areas from where the stories originate.

Dr Elwin died in 1964, having spent most of his life working for the social benefit of the tribes in India.  During the latter part of his life, he did receive acknowledgment for his work, and he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1961.  He was not one for preserving tribal cultures and keeping them as they were; as he said himself, his approach to life was dynamic. If only he had been around today to see the project that his work has inspired, he would undoubtedly have been excited by it.

Reading from The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin (1964: 303):

"We should lay much greater stress on the possibility of the tribal people helping us. At present all the emphasis is on our helping them.  Let us teach them that their own culture, their own arts are precious things that we respect and need. When they feel they can make a contribution to their country, they will feel a part of it: this is therefore an important aspect of their integration." 

The Animation Workshop to recreate Verrier Elwin as the Presenter of the "Tales of the Tribes" animation series is moving forward at Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa.  On Saturday 27th August, the team that has come from Delhi, Ahmedabad and Guwhati receive two visitors who had come to know about the project and were interested to see the action for themselves as well as to interact with the creators.

In the morning, Ghani Zaman, who is known for his photography on the one hand, and for developing bamboo products on the other, dropped in at the Autocad Lab, where the workshop is taking place.   Ghani was fascinated to see the character of Verrier Elwin in animated form;  he told the team that he had always enjoyed animation but that he could not comprehend how such magic could be done.  Ghani, originally from Shillong, Meghalaya, recollected how he had seen Elwin in person as a child; Ghani had been a schoolmate of Dr Elwin's sons at St Anthony's in Shillong, and he recollected that at the time, Elwin's stature had made a big impression on him.  He also told the animators that it had been Elwin's smile and friendly countenance that  won the tribal people over and made it easy for him to integrate and become a part of their daily activities, and that his philosophy of love had also made it possible for Elwin to cross the cultural divide.

In the evening, Surya Shankar Dash, an independent film-maker and activist visited the young artists. Surya was also able to provide some information about Verrier Elwin, explaining that anyone who has studied anthropology in India, or who has worked for the social welfare of the tribes would know about the earlier corpus of work by Dr Elwin.  He then went on to detail  the tribes that Dr Elwin had researched in Orissa; these include the Bonda, the Langia Saora, the Gadeba and the Kondh. Unfortunately his books on these tribes are largely out of print, and therefore unavailable for purchase, or in the Central Library of the University.

Surya began as an advertising film-maker, but on finding out more about the situation of the tribes in his own home state of Orissa, he instead began to make films to raise awareness about the tribal cause and the need to preserve their natural resources.   Surya's work has been inspiring to the young animators. They were able to see The Lament of Niyamraja and a short animation entitled Shot Dead for Development at the evening screening event, and in the interaction that followed, Surya explained the advantage for Adivasis to make their own films and tell their own stories, and how their involvement gave the end product more meaning for them.

The Animation Workshop to bring Verrier Elwin to life as an animated character to present "The Tales of the Tribes" series of short films has built up a good pace now. It is taking place at the Centurion University  in Bhubaneshwar, in the Kautilya Building, Autocad Lab.  

After a slow start, the team of animators and artists are hard at work.  The artwork for the animated sequences is being hand painted by Garo artist Arak Sangma.  Having by now designed the character, which has been scanned and rigged using computer software, Arak is now concentrating on the details.  He has depicted a range of hand gestures, eye and mouth movements and all this will help to animate Verrier Elwin.  

Meanwhile, the three animators, Wangdan, Rabindra and Kirat have been busy composing complex background scenes using scanned Gond artwork that was produced by Gond artists in a workshop in Bhopal last year: these Pardhan artists are specialists in depicting trees, so you can imagine what a feast for the eye it will all be when the character is lifted into his magical, mythical environment that sets the space for the stories...

Even students of the University are getting drawn towards producing some animation.  They have decided to start at the beginning, and have been experimenting with stop-motion animation using rice to animate with.  There is nothing like first hand experience to make you realise what animators go through to create films that charm and entertain us.

Reading from Verrier Elwin, A Philosophy for NEFA (1959).    

"We see now that the tribal people will be of the greatest service to India if they are able to bring their own particular treasures into the common life,not by becoming second-rate copies of ourselves. Their moral virtues, their self-reliance, their courage, their artistic gifts, their cheerfulness are things we need. They also need the comradeship, the technical knowledge, the wider world-view of the plains. The great problem is how to develop the synthesis, how to bring the blessings and advantages of modern medicine, agriculture and education to them, without destroying the rare and precious values of tribal life. We can solve this problem if we do not try to go too fast: if we allow the people a breathing-space in which to adjust themselves to the new world: if we do not overwhelm them with too many officials; if we aim at fundamentals and eliminate everything that is not vitally necessary; if we go to them in genuine love and true simplicity. 

The Animation Workshop is starting to attract attention from students of Centurion University, Bhubaneshwar.  They didn't know what to expect, when they began to hear whispers about this animation thing going on in the Autocad Lab.  The students shyly approached us in the corridors and their eyes were shining: they were interested in joining our project, they said.    I promised them animation film screenings every evening -  if they could only make it across to room no 6, in the main building at around 5pm.  Today we saw a few classics; and indeed, some of them, such as those by Norman McClaren over 60 years ago, were quite in the 'ancient' category as far as the students were concerned.  They had never imagined that a chair could come to life with such skill and character, as in "The Chairy Tale", it was pure magic.  The theme of this screening were films with  some familiar flavour of Indian design, They laughed with enjoyment at  message of "Love Thy Neighbour".  Ishu Patel's folktale "How Death Came to Earth" made in 1971, was followed with the last screening of the day, "Manjoor Jhali, the Creation of the Peacock" - the first story in the "Tales of the Tribes" series that the film makers, who were present,  are working to complete.

Reading from The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography (1998: 100), with the students of Architectural Planning at the University, Monday afternoon:

A Delhi news-magazine recently referred to me as ‘that freakish Englishman, the brilliance of whose eccentricities even Oxford could not dim’, though it admitted that I had ‘been able to discover poetry and art in strange places.’  I do not resent this curious judgement, for there is nothing very discreditable in being eccentric, but I wonder whether it is really true.  Is it eccentric to live in beautiful scenery in the hills among some of the most charming people in the country, even though they may be ignorant and poor? I would have thought that on other standards it was far more eccentric to live in the noise, the dirt and disturbances of a town, to waste ones time in clubs, playing silly games with cards or knocking little balls about on tennis court or golf course. To go to a village to find a cause that is worth living for, to escape from the infantile gossip and the tedious recreations of civilization may be unusual , but I do not think there is anything specially eccentric about it. 

An Animation Workshop is currently taking place at the Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa and it is organised and coordinated by the Adivasi Arts Trust (UK).  The objective of the project is to complete the final chapter of the "Tales of the Tribes" series of short animated films.  In fact, the five short films, stories from Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Madhya Pradesh are complete; it has been a five year long project.  What remains for this workshop are the linking sequences in which the character of Dr Verrier Elwin is brought to life -  animated - to introduce the five films.

Why Verrier Elwin? Well he was a storyteller par excellence.  In fact, Dr Elwin spent decades documenting the oral tribal storytelling traditions from Central and North East India, and he published several weighty books of the same.  Besides, Elwin was unusual; he actually lived with the tribes back in those days before Indian Independence, and he recognised that they had unique and valuable cultures that contrasted the dominant image of primitive backwardness.

Today, the voice for the Verrier Elwin presenter character was provided by a professional voice over artist, Ravi Manie.  This marks a milestone - now that the character has a voice,  we can  hear his opinions and learn from his knowledge.  The visual design for the character has also been decided, and  the young artist Arak is busy creating the angles and poses required for the animated sequences.
The team did not know much about Elwin when they started; hardly anyone knows of the great contribution made by Elwin to the tribal cultures, and this project aims to resolve that by bringing the anthropologist, writer and visionary in an accessible form to young audiences in India and worldwide.

Resource for research on Dr Verrier Elwin:

Interview with Cristoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Part 2 of 3 (see 29 minutes into the interview)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jQHNjSWAg4

The Animation Workshop to develop the character of Verrier Elwin as the Presenter of the Tales of the Tribes collection of short animated folktales from India, has started.  The three week long event is taking place at the Centurion University in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, and will continue until the end of the month.

The location is a sleepy setting.  Located amidst the lush green fields of Eastern India, the pace of life is leisurely, and existence is much less stressed than has become our normal experience.   At the end of the second day and the eager team of five that have come for the event, are yet to be introduced to the students.  In the meantime, they have a large, well equipped computer lab available for their use, and have been making it 'ready', essentially getting the systems into place to bring the character to life.

The first stage has been to go through the script, written by the co-ordinator, Tara Douglas.  The three young animators who have decided to get involved in the visualisation of this project, are now deconstructing the requirements and examining the sequences, shot by shot.  These sequences will establish links between the five stories, through the artwork and the narrative, as Verrier Elwin introduces each of the films, recaps the punchlines and guides our audiences into the supernatural and sublime world of tribal storytelling.  This phase will result in a storyboard, which provides the plan for the labour intensive work of actually bringing the scenes to life in animation.

  

Animation Workshop in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa

The Adivasi Arts Trust (UK) has been invited to coordinate a three week long Animation Workshop to take place at the Centurion University, Bhubaneshwar.  This event will take place from 10 August onwards.

The objective of this workshop is to create the remaining animation for the Tales of the Tribes series of five short films that are adaptations of indigenous storytelling for the audio visual medium. For these final sequences, an animated "Master of Ceremonies" will be created to introduce the short films, and to contextualize them a bit. We will be working on an adaptation of the character of  Dr Verrier Elwin to introduce the five short films and offer a Trophy for the story that gets the most votes from young audiences.

The character of Verrier Elwin will be designed by young Garo artist Arak Sangma from Meghalaya. Arak is travelling from Guwahati for this work. The animation will be done by three graduates from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad: Wangdan Wangpan (from Arunachal Pradesh), Rabindra Bhagat (from Jharkhand) and Kirat Brahma (from Assam). We will also have interactive sessions, film screenings and participation from interested students of the Centurion University.

The character will be 2D: that is hand painted and scanned for manipulation in the computer using software.

Elwin is an appropriate person to introduce the stories having spent most of his life living with tribal communities first in Central India and later in the North East region. He has documented many volumes of folktales and his published collections include Myths of Middle India (1949), Tribal Myths of Orissa (1954), Myths of the North-East Frontier of India, Volume 1 (1958), A New Book of Tribal Fiction (1970), and Folk-tales of Mahakoshal (1980).  Elwin (1998:144) explained that his method of translation was simple and that above all, he avoided either adding any new images or suppressing those of the original, and in this way he was committed to maintaining the authentic meanings of the stories as far as possible.  

During the workshop we will be giving regular updates here on this blog, so do follow along with us as we explore the great work of Verrier Elwin, and learn how to bring him to life again for new young audiences.