A respected panel of industry experts will assemble to judge all the entries for the ASIFA India Awards of Excellence.  Sanjiv Waieerkar
Sanjiv is currently the Chief Creative officer for MAAC . He has been in the animation industry since his graduation from collage in 1991. He partnered with the father of Indian animation Mr. Ram Mohan, and together had a huge monopoly and stronghold in the advertising industry, bagging lots of awards internationally and locally. The appetite to grow internationally lead to a merger of his company merging, and starting a profit sharing partnership with UTV,to form a first of its kind outsourcing animation outfit back in 1997. Sanjiv was instrumental in growing a first of its kind animation setup at a time when no animation training was available in the country. He has also worked with a few international production TV shows and home DVDS. He has also been part of many new ventures.
He is a supporter of grooming the Indian animation community, and is a active founding member of TASI (The animation society of India) and has been a jury on different animation platforms like Nasscom, FICCI. He also has been propaganding and taking workshops and sessions on animation internationally as well as locally. Animation has always been an integral part of Sanjiv and will continue to be one.  Shilpa Ranade
Shilpa Ranade has been a practicing animator for the last ten years, and also an Educator for the last six years as well. Her primary concern during practice and teaching has been indigenous animation and through her work has attempted to engage with images and narratives to make animation, which while being personal were also socially and culturally relevant.
She is also involved in researching and writing on animation. Animation and Children’s book illustration are among the type of work she undertakes. Currently Shilpa is teaching animation at postgraduate level at IIT Bombay.  Gitanjali Rao
Gitanjali Rao graduated as an applied artist from Sir. J. J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai, in 1994. She won the gold medal and 7 awards for her final year project campaign. A self taught animator, she learned on the job during her association with many studios and film projects early on in her career. Her keen interest in narrative techniques got her into acting and stage crafts for a while. Painting, theater, folk arts of a culturally rich land finally synthesized into the art of making animation films. Her two independently produced, directed and animated short films ?Orange? and ?Printed Rainbow?, have won her 29 International awards, besides attending over 80 festivals all over the world. Printed Rainbow has been the first ever Indian animation film to be selected at Cannes and to be short listed in the final ten films for the Oscar. She also has a string of very popular and award winning animated commercials to her credit and is currently represented by Acme Film Works LA.
Gitanjali is currently working on an animation feature "GIRGIT" which is slated for release in 2010. She has also been presenting her work and giving talks at various international Animation Conferences.  Chetan Sharma
Co-founder & director of Animagic Special Effects Pvt. Ltd, one of India's most reputed independent animation studios, Chetan Sharma is an award winning classical animator, besides being a film designer and a book illustrator. He won the National Award for his work on Raju & I, a short film on child rights, which has won critical acclaim in over 40 festivals around the world and won 14 national and international awards including the first ever ASIFA award for excellence in 2004. He has also directed Chakachak- a poem for mother earth, a music video that formed part of Sai Paranjpye's children's film on environmental issues of the same name and has traveled to many festivals as an independent short. His last film "Maaa-aa" for Children's F.S.I. is an attempt to blend the richness and detail of classical animation with the humour, zest and musicality of the rustic folk theatre traditions of India. In 2006, He was invited to present his films at Animated Exeter, Exeter, UK, being the first Asian to receive the honor at the prestigious festival. Besides designing and directing scores of animated commercials, he was also responsible for the visual development for Ram Madhwani's "Happydent TVC" voted top Indian commercial of 2006 and winner of The Silver Lion at Cannes, 2007. In Vidhu Vinod Chopra's "Eklavya" he worked on the visual development and storyboard design, and also animated and designed a 3 minute long Title/Prologue sequence for the film. Apart from animation he takes a keen interest in illustrating for books and has worked with various publications like Tata Donnelly and Karadi Tales designing some of their most popular titles The Monkey King, Krishna and the recently released Bhasmasura and Bakasura.  Shrirang Sathye
Shrirang is a Graduate of Art (commercial) from Sir JJ Institute of Applied Art, in Mumbai. He has also done his Masters in Design (Visual Communication) from Industrial Design Center, IIT Mumbai. He has had a career spanning over a period of 19 years during which he has been involved in numerous Ad Commercials and Episodic animated work for television. He has also been a partner in his own animation studio, Toonsense Animation Studios for a period of 5 years. His strengths are in character design and storyboarding apart from being one of the premier animation artists in India. He excels in the classical style of animation and prefers the pencil to the computer. His exposure to 3D animation in VCL has added an additional strength in his abilities to value-add by combining the strengths of traditional animation with computer graphics. Shrirang is currently working as an Animation Director and Creative Supervisor with Visual Computing Labs, on "Roadside Romeo", a fully animated 3D feature produced jointly by Yashraj Films and Walt Disney Pictures. His involvement, besides animation, included spearheading the entire pre-production process for "Roadside Romeo" including Character Designs, Storyboarding, Set & Prop design etc
Awards
Won the coveted IAAFA (Indian Academy of Advertising Film Art) Award for the years 1990, 1991,1993,1994,1997. These awards are presented for technical excellence in various fields of advertising film making including animation. Won the CICA award in 2004 in the category of best music video for "Deewana". This music video had a combination of live action and 2D animation, which was based on the Indian miniature style of painting. "Deewana" was selected the winner from around 1400 entries from around the world including countries like France, UK and USA. These awards are a part of Centre International Du Cinema D?Animation (CICA) held in Annecy, France  Chetan Deshmukh
Chetan graduated from Film School at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1999-2000 and majored in Animation and Visual Effects. After the graduation he worked at several effects houses and studios in Hollywood for 5 years, in roles ranging from Visual Effects artist to Compositing TD. He also received personal credit for films "Chicago", "Shanghai Knights" and "Cradle 2 The Grave", "Day After Tomorrow", "Last Samurai", "Gangs of New York", "Final Destination 2" and more....
|
Awards of Excellence 
