“Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast” - Lewis Carroll
Still from short film ‘Aamar’ by Reechik Bannerjee
Vision
While contemporary visual culture is replete with digitally produced and manipulated imagery, they all start on a drawing board, with the stroke of the hand. Tactile exploration along with digital intervention and enhancement is key to envisioning impossible worlds and interactive virtual spaces. Commercial and artistic spaces today abound in several forms of time-based media works. At Srishti Manipal we encourage such media works to start primariliy from a deep immersion into one’s social, personal, historical, cultural and contemporary contexts.
Srishti Manipal offers the 4-year undergraduate course in Digital Media Arts at its main campus in Bengaluru. Whether it is movements that are drawn, models made to act, or, interaction of live-action and computer generated imagery (CGI), this is a space to explore new frontiers of time-based media formed by the interaction of time, movement, image, text, sound and space. The key focus of the program is on a broad range of 2D animation and manipulated moving-image practices.
Still from short film ‘ Let him eat cake’ by Neha Kiran
Key Values
Playfulness
Social Responsibility
Cultural Innovation
Course Structure
The curriculum comprises of different ways of learning as follows:
- Foundation introduces students to basic principles and tools of Art, Design and Technology as methods, tools and processes. Read more >>
- Disciplinary Studios are learning spaces where students develop core disciplinary capabilities, while navigating a trans-disciplinary environment
- General Studies is a common and compulsory programme of study that integrates Humanities, Sciences, Maths, business and finance. Development and Policy Studies and also offers Languages (Spanish, French and German) Read more >>
- Interim is an immersive introduction to practice in new and emerging areas of art and design and environmental exposure
- Electives are of three kinds - this program allows students to expand their skills, develop the interests as well as provide opportunities for travel exchange
- Internship/Apprenticeship is compulsory work experience done over the summer-break between the 6th and 7th semester
- Project based learning involves the application and synthesis of capabilities acquired. Two projects, pre-thesis and thesis, is culmination of the 4-year undergraduate program, which allows for demonstration of an integration of values, positions, capabilities and practice. Read more >>
Still from short film ‘One wish’ by Srishti Sachar
Learning Approach
Learning at the undergraduate level in Digital Media Arts involves:
- Inter-disciplinary and choice based navigation where students can select courses as per their core area of interest
- Contextual learning through an immersion in broader socio-cultural contexts
- Exploration, reflection and critical investigation of personal contexts and experiences
- Understanding of the audience and the communicative modes of Digital Media Arts
- Thinking through doing, observing, acquiring skills in different storytelling mediums, innovating and re-designing narrative
Still from short film ‘Stay’ by Ishita Uniyal
Capability Sets
Upon successful completion of this course graduates will have developed the following capabilities:
- Constructing narrative, meaning, feeling or thought in moving image
- Understanding the “language” of media art practice (animation, gaming, film/video etc.)
- Thoughtful creating of characters, situations, and scenarios
- Visual, aesthetic and performative sensibility (in constructing moving image)
- Spatial understanding – physical, sonic and/or symbolic
- Structural thinking - understanding natural, physical and digital environments and materials
- Creative problem solving and management of processes
- Inventive thinking, risk taking, approaching the unknown
- Keen observation, assimilation and expression
- Constructing viewer experiences
- Research – inquiry, probing and methodical investigation
- Focused understanding of a given context and how one relates to it
- Creative use of techniques and expertise in their application
- Ability to engage with diverse topics and bring about creative synthesis
- Autonomy, individual awareness and self-directed processes
Still from short film ‘Unreachable Heights’ by Mudita
Opportunities
The above capability sets equip and prepare students for a wide range of career opportunities:
Students can work in the industries of advertising, television, cinema and interactive media. They can continue their practice, develop their own work and become entrepreneurs. They can pursue higher education. They can work for established design firms and production houses. They can develop their own projects and apply for grants.
People
Enquiries
Disciplinary Intersections
The program is informed by the following learning disciplines:
Film
Graphic Design
Interaction Design
Literature/Writing
Performance
Screen Studies
Social and Cultural Studies
Visual Effects
Research and Collaboration
The students under this program will have the opportunity to work with the following centers and labs at Srishti.
The Kabir Project
Srishti Films
Centre for Public History (CPH)
Centre for Education, Research, Training and Development (CERTAD)
Student Work
This show-reel is a glimpse of the different types of student work in animation at our Institute. Here we consider animation in its broadest sense as any work that involves a frame-by-frame manipulation and construction of movement.
Image and Animation Credits: Students of Srishti Institute (SI) and Students of Srishti Manipal Institute (SMI)
This is a compilation of 4 short animated pieces. The brief was to create publicity material that can bring awareness about 'gender and public spaces' as precursors to a dance performance that addressed the same.
Image and Animation Credits: Students of Srishti Institute (SI) and Students of Srishti Manipal Institute (SMI)
The project spaces in our institute allows students to create a short film or moving image piece. It addresses all processes from pre-production to post-production to have a finished piece of work. This show-reel has clips from 11 different short films of students from the 'Animating the Intangible' and 'Moving Image' projects.
Image and Animation Credits: Students of Srishti Institute (SI) and Students of Srishti Manipal Institute (SMI)
A visual effect is the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments, which are realistic and believable. To shoot them in the real world would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer-generated imagery (CGI) have become increasingly common in big-budget films, games, commercials, television, motion graphics, etc. With the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software, visual effects have recently become accessible to amateur filmmaker as well.
Image and Animation Credits: Students of Srishti Institute (SI) and Students of Srishti Manipal Institute (SMI)
FAQs
Digital Media Arts at Srishti comprises mainly of the fields of Animation and all forms of manipulated moving image. The course looks at 2D animation as a way of communicating and expressing ideas about oneself and the world as experienced. Animation can no longer be seen as an exclusive field, but has to be considered within a broad practice of digital media and how one can push its boundaries into new frontiers
The program is designed to give an overview of several aspects of animation filmmaking. The emphasis is on developing a holistic understanding of the possibilities in these fields. The student can choose to develop skills in the interest of their choice and also combine skills from other courses offered across Srishti Manipal. Hence graduates with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in DMA will be able to function in different roles in the industries of media and entertainment, advertising, communication services, web design or in education and welfare sectors. They will be equipped to contribute in design thinking, ideating and/or production processes of the animation practice.
If you are interested in inventing and creating new worlds, if you like the art of communicating and especially to condense a lot of what you want to say in a short time, if you are playful, if you like drawing or building elements that can move and come to life, if you want to have full control of the moving image world that you want to create, then this would be a good choice for you.
The course at Srishti Manipal gives high importance to context-based work. The context could pertain to social, cultural or environmental themes, or be an enquiry of the personal and the content of one’s own experience and art making processes. The program is designed to help students be better learners and pursue their own goals and areas of research. Situated in a multidisciplinary environment, there are good possibilities of comparing, acquiring and appropriating methods and processes from other disciplines into one’s own practice of digital media.
Yes, you will be able to pursue a Masters at Srishti Manipal or in any place of study of your choice.
