It’s time to rock it. We are ringing in our 21st anniversary with a mega extravaganza on Thursday, the 18th of July, 2019 [8:30 AM to 5:00 PM] at Ravindrabharathi Kala Bhavan, Hyderabad. Add your energy to the celebrations and pump up the excitement! We are counting you in. #ArenaAnimationDilsukhnagar #21st #Anniversarycelebrations.
Contact us for any details: 040 2404 2343.
Image Courtesy: aarp.org
Unemployment has always been a thorn in the flesh for India. Recent trends are proving worrisome, especially for young aspirants prepping for a career in the real world. Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data showed that the unemployment rate rose sharply to touch a 28-month high of 8.4% in the third week of April 2019. Since India’s Independence in 1947, unemployment has been hovering in the range of 5.74% (Average of 71 years). While the lowest unemployment rate was 2.9% (in the year 1953), the highest unemployment rate of 9.7% was registered in the year 1982.
The current rise in unemployment presents a disturbing picture highlighted by shrinking jobs and expanding pay crisis. While this trend can be attributed to several factors including slower job creation w.r.t the number of fresh graduates joining the workforce every month, one of the key reasons is sub-standard education for students which fails to provide them suitable jobs. As a result, many settle for low-salary, non-core jobs to earn a living and are thus not gainfully employed, while others remain unemployed for long periods, up to two years in many cases.
This begs the question: What’s the point in churning our degree-holders who lack employability skills and are unfit to be a productive part of the workforce? And spare a thought for the millions of career-aspirants who invest precious resources with the dream of gainful employment.
The book ‘JOBONOMICS’* by Goutam Das presents an in-depth analysis of India’s employment crisis. With hard-hitting facts and real stories, the book highlights the magnitude of the problem and the immediate focus needed on skills-oriented education stating that “India has a culture of knowledge, not one of skilling.”
This culture has been impacting sectors across India for many years now. In fact, this piece is a continuation of our previous blog which touched upon the job crisis, pointing to the fact that unemployment is more prevalent in mainstream career pathways such as Engineering and Management which were until now highly sought-after and appealing.
Lately, Engineering has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. India produces 1.5 million engineers every year but barely 7% are employable according to an India Today Web Desk Report. In fact, a McKinsey report red-flagged the issue a decade ago revealing that only a quarter of India’s engineers were actually employable. This trend is influenced largely by the outdated and sub-standard education (inadequate, irrelevant and inferior) paradigms not just in engineering but management, science and arts too. Virtually every discipline is riddled with the same issue: sub-standard education leading to low employability of graduates.
Creative Multimedia
How can India tackle this problem of low-quality education? Leading the way for academies/colleges across disciplines/sectors in India is Dilsukhnagar Arena, a revolutionary multimedia institute focused on experiential and innovative education. For over 21 years now, Dilsukhnagar Arena has been singularly committed to Enhancing EmployabilityTM. The famed institution widely acknowledged as the Largest and Best Digital Media Academy in India has successfully skilled over 26,000 students and enabled fruitful placements for them at top companies.
Here’s how Dilsukhnagar Arena got it right…….right from the beginning!
Driving Knowledge: To ensure that education evolves at the same pace as industry, Dilsukhnagar Arena works closely with top recruiters to update its multimedia courses according to current talent needs. This helps equip students with advanced knowledge to stay at the cutting-edge of the discipline and to be recognized as well-informed and industry-relevant talent.
Building Communication: Despite a sterling academic performance, candidates with poor English language skills can lose out on jobs as, English – the common language of the corporate world, is a vital employability skill. Dilsukhnagar Arena affords students a strong grounding in English to enhance their employability and to equip them with this vital advantage so they can stay confident during the interview and at the workplace.
Improving Competence: In most cases, education is not industry-aligned and fails to prepare students for employment. The resulting skill gap ensures that students are not readily employable. Dilsukhnagar Arena thrives on experiential training to close the skill gap through a variety of hands-on training programs: the reason for the high employability quotient of Dilsukhnagar Arena students and the academy’s popularity as the first port-of-call for leading recruiters across industries.
That’s not all, Dilsukhnagar Arena’s prolific mentoring, learning resources, and value-additions, all add to the superior training programs which are designed with the singular goal of Enhancing EmployabilityTM. Acknowledged for its benchmark training, Creative Multimedia, Dilsukhnagar Arena’s parent organization has been bestowed with the Best Digital Media Academy in India Award (thrice) and the Award for Academic Excellence (twice) by many reputed organizations.
Having facilitated employment for over 26,000 young Indians till date, Dilsukhnagar Arena Institute, with a rich legacy spanning 21 years, has contributed its bit to nation building ever since its inception way back in 1998 and is a veritable role model not just for Digital Media but for other disciplines across the board including Engineering, Management and Science in India.
Education must be a productive instruction and training procedure designed not just to impart knowledge but also help develop skills, especially for young people in colleges who are the immediate future of the nation. Irrespective of the discipline and the academy, the need of the hour is to scrap/refresh outdated curricula to meet the current industry requirements, ensure improved and adequate training infrastructure, and introduce experiential programs designed in collaboration with industry experts so that students acquire relevant, job-ready skills. This will help enhance the quality of education and improve student’s employability.
The goal should be to empower students with high employability skills and put them on the path to productive employment with better jobs and more rewarding work: the key to the improved socio-economic progress of India.
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*More on this in our next blog (other factors such as technology which are poised to impact employment in a big way in the near future).
Mayank was possibly in the happiest phase of his life. All of 22, the relief from chucking studies for good was visible on his face. Fresh as a dewdrop, the newly minted graduate was upbeat about his career and raring to step into the real world. A lucrative job, the satisfaction of standing on his own two feet and the pride in his parent’s eyes; his dream future was just before him. Sadly, life didn’t play along and the dream went bust. Mayank, an aspiring Engineer from a reputed college now finds himself jobless, even a full year after graduation.
His father, an employee with a Hyderabad-based PSU is a worried man. Mayank, from Dilsukhnagar Hyderabad, completed his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering and was keen on building a career in the manufacturing sector. Unfortunately, he was unable to get a job through his skills are highly relevant in industries such as Aerospace, Automobiles, Defense, Electronics, Infrastructure, Marine, Metals, Oil and Gas, Pharmaceuticals and Energy.
Mayank’s case is not an isolated one. This is the plight of lakhs of engineering graduates in India who find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. The employability rate of fresh graduates is declining steeply. Studies indicate that nearly 40 percent of the 15 lakh engineers India produces every year are not readily employable. Another study by ASSOCHAM reveals that only 7 percent of MBA graduates are employable. With the exception of government-run IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and a few others, a majority of the 5,000+ business schools in India are producing ill-equipped graduates who are unable to find gainful employment.
While there are several reasons for this sad state of affairs including the obsolete curriculum, and poor training, one of the key factors is the mushrooming of engineering and management institutes and the widening demand-supply gap with more graduates chasing fewer jobs.
While students across career streams, and the industry, in general, are grappling with this crisis, nowhere is it more concentrated than in hitherto mainstream career pathways such as Engineering and Management. As a result, students are increasingly scouting for superior alternatives. In the recent past, the academic sector has been witnessing a major shift to digital media and other new-generation career pathways which are proving to be more rewarding, secure and growth-friendly.
Image Courtesy: Linhart PR
The Indian Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector is going great guns, growing at 13.4% year-on-year (YOY) to touch INR 1.67 trillion in 2018. It is expected to cross INR 2.35 trillion ($33.6 billion) by 2021, at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.6%, according to a FICCI and EY report. The movie industry, of course, is a major contributor to growth. Just one look at the index of films in leading film database websites will give you an idea of the huge business generated annually. The M&E sector is entering a phase of accelerated growth, powered by many factors including new video streaming platforms, the spread of regional content, growth of smartphones and penetration of affordable broadband. Truly, these are exciting times and a harbinger of the huge growth ahead for the M&E industry.
This huge growth is likely to translate into a plethora of jobs and boost opportunities for students learning Animation, VFX, Gaming, Graphic Design, Web designer courses and UI/UX Design courses. In fact, the media and entertainment sector’s growth is directly proportional to the population growth, as virtually every individual consumes entertainment in some form or the other. In this context, it’s safe to say that a career in M&E offers a secure and stable future with strong potential for career growth.
Today, jobs in media and entertainment are becoming more and more attractive. In fact, exciting and rewarding job opportunities exist not just in M&E sector companies but across other businesses including Animation & VFX Studios, Gaming Studios, Film Production Houses, Television Channels, Content Production Companies, Advertising & PR Agencies, Digital Marketing Firms, IT & ITeS Enterprises, Infrastructure & Real Estate Companies, Education & Training Companies, Pharma Research Firms, Industrial Design Agencies and e-Commerce & e-Education companies to name a few.
While an Animation/VFX/Gaming fresher commands INR 25,000 – 30,000 per month as starting salary, Graphic and Web Design freshers command INR 20,000 – 25,000 per month in the job market depending on various factors including the recruiter, the job role and the candidate’s caliber. Importantly, as this is a highly creative field, the growth potential is unlimited. Exceptionally talented candidates with 5+ years of high-quality experience are well-positioned to attract six figures salaries and more.
Some of the big recruiters of digital media talent across industries include Walt Disney Studios, Amazon, Deloitte, HCL, Infosys, Microsoft, MPC, Technicolor, TCS, Prime Focus, Deluxe Digital, Cyient, Prana Studios, Makuta, Green Gold Animation, Reliance Digital, DQ Entertainment, Orient Blackswan, Thomson Reuters, Tech Mahindra and EA to name a few. All these companies are many sought-after companies offering rewarding jobs with tremendous scope for career growth.
The shift, or perhaps more appropriately, ‘Exodus’ from conventional career streams to Digital Media & Entertainment is visible and is gaining traction even as technology and trends unshackle growth.
P.S.: Watch out for our next blog “Enhancing Employability of Young India. Since 1998”, a narrative on how India’s best digital media academy has been playing the training game smartly to help its students avoid the “unemployability issues” plaguing fresh graduates of engineering and other mainstream disciplines in India.
Thursday, the 2nd of May, 2019 proved to be an inspiring and fruitful day for students pursuing their 1st-year B.A. Visual Art (Animation & VFX) and B.A. Visual Arts (Applied Art) programs at CMCFA, one of India’s finest destinations for Creative Arts education. CMCFA organized a day-long, participative character design workshop.
The workshop was conducted by Aditya N Chari, a fine arts graduate and gifted artist with over 18 years of experience in character design, caricatures, comic illustrations, and paintings. He worked as a Concept Lead, Character Designer, Graphic Designer, Visualizer, Animator, and BG/Layout/Pre-Production Artist. He also freelanced for many reputed companies. His professional associations include Prana Studios, Virgin Comics, Reliance Infocomm, Grey Worldwide, Leo Burnett, Lintas, McKann Ericsson, Ogilvy & Mather, Aurobindo Society, Forbes, Hungama.com, ISCKON, and MTV, to name a few.
He is the best-selling author+Illustrator of three books on figure drawing. As a character sketch/concept artist, he worked for many films including Bahubali (Bhallala Deva character) and frequently holds portrait demonstrations, one-man shows (exhibitions) and group shows. As a mentor, he earlier taught figure drawing and character design at Animation Art School-Goa and is currently teaching design fundamentals at Gurukul School of Design apart from delivering guest lectures frequently.
Bringing his vast experience to the workshop, Mr. Aditya took students on a steep learning curve, covering different facets of the craft, while offering the techniques and tips vital to creating professional character design. Commencing at eight in the morning, the workshop was split into three sessions and wrapped up at four in the evening. Students had many takeaways from the workshop: step by step, hands-on methods to draw; using a reference to improve drawing skills, developing character from rough sketches to developed concepts, line & stroke techniques, building versatility and key skills needed to create a fully illustrated character.
Image Credits – Wikipedia
The workshop was dedicated to Satyajit Ray – one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century, on the occasion of his 98th birth anniversary.
The workshop was organized by CMCFA as part of its multiple initiatives aimed at helping students acquire vital job-skills. This focus on producing highly-trained, job-ready artists is one of the many defining features of CMCFA’s training and its spectacular placements result in every year. Leading recruiters in the animation, gaming and VFX sectors prefer CMCFA students and frequently conduct campus drives at the college due to the high concentration of highly trained creative talent. The biggest advantage that students of CMCFA have over their peers at other colleges is placement excellence.
Creative Multimedia College is one of India’s leading fine arts colleges offering the in-demand 3-year B.A. Visual Arts (Animation & VFX) and B.A. (Applied Art) Degree programs in association with the famed Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFAU) – Hyderabad. These are industry-focused, up-to-date career programs acknowledged by the industry. Upon successful completion, students receive a prestigious degree from JNAFAU: a veritable passport to the job market with transferable skills, global employability, rewarding jobs, and good career growth opportunities.
Ever since inception, CMCFA has been committed to “Enhancing Employability” of its students and helping them gain the competitive edge in the job market. The college has shaped scores of winning careers and is considered a springboard to career success for students aspiring for a bright future in the global digital media and entertainment industry, especially the Animation, VFX, and Gaming verticals.
We are Creative Multimedia Group, a revolutionary digital media education powerhouse with two decades of rich experience in Animation, VFX, Graphic Design and Web Design training, imparted through our institutions – ‘Dilsukhnagar Arena Animation’ and ‘Creative Multimedia College of Fine Arts’. With first-class training and top-class placements, we are widely acknowledged as the Best Digital Media Academy in India by career aspirants and recruiters alike.
We are as old as India’s multimedia industry. We established our training centre way back in the year 1998 with only a couple of students. In a short span of time, we’ve emerged as India’s largest and best digital media academy with a string of unrivalled academic achievements and placement records.
We’ve revolutionized digital media education in India with the singular focus on “Enhancing Employability”. Our inspiring campus offers a supportive learning environment with production-grade infrastructure and extensive learning resources apart from exclusive and full-fledged interview facilities for campus recruitment. With first-class training and top-class placements, we are the preferred destination in India for students seeking to build careers in Animation, VFX, Graphic Design and Web Design.
On the sheer strength of our mentoring prowess and the passion with which we own our student’s dreams, leading companies across India prefer our students and travel all the way to our global-standard campus at Dilsukhnagar-Hyderabad to conduct recruitment drives. Placements are our biggest strength. Our placement cell builds and nurtures lasting relationships with leading recruiters in the country on a continuous basis, thus affording excellent campus interview opportunities for our dear students.
In the last two decades, we have shaped the careers of 26,000+ students and afforded rewarding placements for them at leading MNCs, animation and VFX studios, web design companies, digital marketing firms and advertising agencies. Our alumni can be found at top organizations such as MPC, Technicolor, Digital Domain, Prime Focus, EA, Tata Elxsi Limited, Green Gold Animation, DQ Entertainment, Firefly, Makuta, Thomson Reuters, Infosys, Microsoft, HCL, Cognizant, Amazon, Deloitte, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Cyient and all leading TV Channels and Film studios. Many of our alumni are part of Oscar award-winning teams.
For more details visit our site: https://www.bestmultimedia.com/
DNA Inc – the official YouTube channel of Dilsukhnagar Arena is going great guns and creating records of sorts with big leaps in views and subscriptions. DNA Inc is garnering views on a massive scale as the 3D Animation short films on the channel enthral web audiences worldwide.
Launched in the year 2010 with just a handful of subscribers and a few hundred views in the initial months, DNA Inc, on the sheer strength of its engaging content, commanded a rapidly growing online following and powered ahead to surpass several incredible milestones: one million views in 2011, five million views in 2016, ten million views in 2017, fifteen million views in 2018 and a record-shattering twenty million views in 2019. The subscriber base also kept pace with the scorching growth and shot up from 20,000 subscribers (in 2017) to 50,000 subscribers (in 2018) and 75,000 subscribers (in 2019). The growth seems unstoppable as the numbers continue their northward journey at far greater speeds.
DNA Inc is a collective of 7 high-quality 3D Animation Short Films, apart from other CG art created by animation students. The animation shorts, many of them offering thoughtful messages were crafted by animation students of Dilsukhnagar Arena as part of their experiential training. These films have been attracting immense interest from netizens across the world and together, the films have made DNA Inc one of the world’s most popular YouTube channels in its category.
Films such as ‘Feel The Punch’ and ‘Cecelia-The Balcony Girl’ are blockbusters on DNA Inc’s YouTube channel. These two films are a rage with youngsters and are the most widely viewed films on this channel, registering an astounding 11.5 million views and 7.2 million views respectively till date. These numbers represent unrivalled records and no other Indian YouTube channel in this category (3D Animation Shorts by Students) comes close.
Other interesting 3D Animation films on the channel include ‘Hugo vs. Lino’, ‘Bee in the Bonnet’, ‘Twisted’, ‘Frog’s Day Out’ and ‘Yugapurushudu’. Most of these films bagged prestigious awards at leading national and international film festivals.
For instance, ‘Feel The Punch’ won 9 coveted awards, prominent among them being ‘Best Film Award in 3D Space (Animation category) at Bit Film Festival – Hamburg, Germany, Best Animation Film Award at the Hyderabad Short Film Festival, Special Jury Award at the Awards of Excellence, Asifa’s IAD-Mumbai and TASI Viewer’s Choice Award in the Student’s Film Category at Anifest India.
Cecelia-The Balcony Girl won an award at the India International Cinema Today Short Film Awards – Chennai while Hugo vs Lino won 3 awards and Twisted bagged one. All these awards demonstrate the high quality of animation talent and training at Dilsukhnagar Arena apart from the college’s focus on Enhancing EmployabilityTM. To view the complete collection of animated short films (2D & 3D) crafted by students of Dilsukhnagar Arena, please visit http://www.ShortFilmsArena.com
DNA Inc (Dilsukhnagar Arena Incubation), is a first-of-its-kind, experiential animation training initiative aimed at shaping production-ready CG artists for the Animation, VFX and Gaming industries in India. DNA Inc is an initiative of Dilsukhnagar Arena – the leader in Digital Media Education in India offering job-oriented training in Animation, VFX, Gaming, Graphic Design and Web Design at its global-standard campus in Hyderabad.
Image Courtesy: VFX Industry News
Every now and then, filmmakers keep pushing Visual Effects (VFX) to new levels. Steven Spielberg toyed with VFX in the year 1993 to transport us into the astonishing world of ‘Jurassic Park’ – a live-action movie with living, breathing synthetic animals. The year 1999 saw the Wachowskis stun filmgoers with ‘The Matrix’ – the VFX thunderbolt that shook up Hollywood too. Cameron created history in 2009 with ‘Avatar’ – a VFX masterpiece featuring a spellbinding CG (Computer Generated) world populated by photo-realistic, CG characters. And most recently, Christopher Nolan broke new ground, creatively and scientifically, by visualizing realistic alien worlds with the VFX in the film ‘Interstellar’.
Exciting developments/advancements in CG technology and tools including Virtual Production, Performance Capture, VR (Virtual Reality) & AR (Augmented Reality), VFX Rapid Prototyping, Real-Time Tracking/Compositing and Image Processing, combined with the possibilities of creating photorealistic digital characters and younger versions of artists are allowing filmmakers to push the envelope of creativity and choreograph impossible visual spectacles. With more and more VFX films hitting the box-office bulls-eye, and with VFX being adopted increasingly as a high-impact visual communications enabler in industries outside media and entertainment, the demand for VFX professionals is soaring.
VFX is a highly promising career pathway for young creative talent, especially those passionate about film-making/gaming/advertising. With the horizons of VFX expanding, it is now perceived as an exciting career with excellent scope for professional growth. Students keen on careers in VFX would do well to undergo professional VFX training at a reputed institute. Formal training ensures that students benefit from the insights of industry-experienced faculty, vast learning resources such as labs and library and the opportunity to develop valuable and lifelong friendships with like-minded students who could well be one’s future peers in the industry. Importantly, institutes also facilitate campus placements.
Some of the biggest VFX & Animation studios which hire VFX artists include Moving Picture Company (MPC), Double Negative (DNEG), Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), WETA Digital, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Prime Focus. Most of these studios deliver cutting-edge VFX work for world cinema and attract the brightest CG talent. Prime Focus, for instance, is a major VFX player with offices in cities across the world including India – at Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Chandigarh, Goa, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. Prime Focus is amongst the largest recruiters of VFX talent in India, a country which is emerging as a cost-effective destination for VFX outsourcing.
As these are the best studios around, they tend to prefer the best CG talent, trained at the best VFX college. The quality of training, importantly the reputation of the college is a key consideration for recruiters when screening fresh VFX talent. Most of these large studios meet their talent requirements through campus drives. While the hiring criteria varies from studio to studio, employers typically tend to zero-in on candidates who are imaginative and have good creative skills, communication and team skills, keen eye for detail, flair for perfection, command over CG software and of course, passion.
Hyderabad is a great launch pad for VFX careers as the city has a thriving academy-industry eco-system. In fact, the city is home to DQ Entertainment – one of the largest animation studios in the world, Green Gold Animation – the biggest 2D animation company in India, and Creative Multimedia – India’s best and largest digital media academy. The local government is also nurturing a vibrant eco-system and encouraging entrepreneurs to drive growth of the AVCG (Animation, VFX, Gaming and Comics) industry and promote employment opportunities. All these factors are contributing to making Hyderabad the emerging hub for digital media and entertainment in India.
Since the industry needs trained talent, there are several digital media academies dotting the city. Career aspirants can choose from a range of short-term/long-term, degree/diploma courses offered by the best VFX training institutes in Hyderabad. The more experienced and passionate institutes ensure that the course is up to speed with advances in VFX, and in line with the needs and expectations of the industry. While the emphasis is on equipping students with productions skills so they are job-ready, these courses imparted by the reputed institutes allow students to gain in-depth knowledge of VFX apart from inspired them to become lifelong learners.
And as technology continues to evolve, VFX will grow bigger and bigger with more growth in job opportunities and greater scope for career progression. There are many technological developments in the pipeline of leading VFX studios. These developments can well shape the future of film making and create a more vibrant VFX eco-system with heightened demand for trained VFX artists across the globe.
