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.