Ram Mohan: The Most Talented Animator Of The Twentieth Century In India 📝

 

Ram Mohan: The Most Talented Animator Of The Twentieth Century In India 📝

Written By:  Yogesh Gogwekar

Date: 27/06/2021

City: Mahim, Mumbai

The word animation has been derived from the Latin verb animare or animate means,’ bestowing of life’ or ‘to give the life’.  Animation is nothing but to indicate the existence of the person who can breathe. The person who has the capacity to create animation is called an animator. When any picture is being drawn and an animator filmed that picture with lifelike movements, then such creation has been called as animated. Consciousness is contained in the etymology of the word animator because he can give life to the inanimate.  Even stones can speak in his world. Huge animals become flat and liner in an instant and the forms change and become three-dimensional.  Rules of the physical world are not applicable to them.  Therefore, it is important to have an animation world because it tells the stories and communicates emotions and creates the ideas in a unique way which can be understood from Children to the elder. It helps us to connect the world very easily.

It is being considered that the first animation world was invented in Egypt but there was no equipment which could show the drawings in motion.  On 20^th July 1887 in France, Charles-Emie Reynaud created the first fifteen minutes animation film and presented it on 28^th  October 1892 to the public. Later on George Mellis, Winsor McKay, James Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl and Walt Disney have been called as one of the best animators of 20^th Century.  Emile Cohl was considered as the father of the animated cartoon films whereas Walt Disney brought the sound and colour in the animation. Walt Disney invented an animation stand which helped to get the effect of parallax shapes of figures. He had created one of the most popular and immortal characters known as Mickey Mouse which brought laughter, cheerfulness and joy to his spectators. There are no limits to his art. It crosses all boundary lines of languages, age and nations.  In India, one talented person found this tradition and his name was Ram Mohan.

Ram Mohan was born on 26^th August 1931 in Thiruvalla, Kerala. His father Vipin Mohan was a cinematographer and he was very popular for his works in the Malayalam films like Pingami, Pattanathil Sundaran and Mattancherry.  Ram Mohan did his graduation in Mathematics and Chemistry from University of Madras and moved to Mumbai to do the post-graduation in Chemistry. Drawing the Cartoons was his passion but he never thought that he would one day become an animator. At the time of doing the post-graduation, he gave up his post-graduation studies as he got an opportunity to join the Cartoon Film unit of film Division, Government of India in 1956. This was the turning point of his life as he received the training in animation technology from the colleague of Walt Disney Mr. Clair Weeks who was working in Walt Disney Studios.  The main purpose of Ram Mohan to join this unit was to draw cartoons and fulfill his obsession.  Mr. Clair Weeks spotted the talent of Ram Mohan and started giving him training about animation. This was the great moment in the life of Ram Mohan and started developing love and respect for Mr. Clair Weeks.

Ram Mohan worked as an animator with the Film Division till 1968. In the Film Division, he made his first animated film in 1957 known as A Banyan Deer which was based on the story of Mauziram and Jatak. After leaving the film division, he made the animation film This Our India which was based on the book written by Minoo Masani. From 1960 to 1967, he made many animated films which were scripted and designed by him only. In 1967, his animated film ‘Homo Saps’ received the National Award for Best experimental Film. He also participated in the world retrospective of Animation Cinema in Montreal in 1968 and won an Award at the Leipzig Festival of short Films in 1968. He decided to leave the Film Division and joined as Chief of animation division of Prasad Productions. In 1972, he established his own Production Company known as Ram Mohan Biographs. Under his production, he worked on animated commercials, sequences, titles and advertising shorts. He developed an animation film based on our great epic Ramayana with the help of great Japanese animator Yugo Sako. The name of the film was Ramayana; The Legend Prince of Rama and this film was released in 1992.

In the month of April 1997, he merged Ram Mohan Biographs with UTV to form UTV TOONZ, the animation arm of United Studios Limited and formed RM-USL Animation which became India’s biggest and leading Animation Film Studio. During his tenure in Ram Mohan Biographic, he has trained many students who were interested in animation films. He was also the Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Mumbai based animation Company known as Graphiti Multimedia. He took keen interest to develop the education for making qualitative animation films, therefore, he established Graphiti School of Animation in 2006. He worked for Johns Hopkin University to develop social communication animation work which contains the series of J Bole to Jadoo. He had done great work for Hindi Film Cinema by creating an animate song for B R Chopra’s film Pati Patni Aur Woh, title sequence for Satyajit Ray’s film Shatranj Ke Khiladi, Mrinal Sen’s Bhuyam Shome, Biwi O Biwi, Do Aur Do Paanch, Kamchor and many other Hindi films. Raj Kapoor wanted him to design an animation sequence for the song ‘Bhanware Ne Khilaya Phool’ for his film Prem Rog of 1982 but it did not work.  He had also directed a series of educational films on environment and population.  He directed the film Taru for Children’s Film Society in 1989 and also directed four episodic TV series Meena in 1995.

The age of computers excited Ram Mohan but he missed the real beauty of artistic judgment that came with pencil and paper.  Still through computers, he brought the life in Amul Girl, The Air India Maharaja and most famous strepsils openmouthed MGM Lion who squeaks in an advertisement. About the future of Indian Animation Film, he said,” Bollywood and financiers had been indifferent to animation in India and thought it was not worth investing in until Hanuman in 2005 made them realise it could be profitable. Now more financiers and producers are interested in animation. Hanuman was the first animated feature film completely made in India with Indian artists. Now there is not much future in outsourced work because so many other Asian markets, like Vietnam, are getting into animation now and the margins have shrunk. It will be more profitable in the future to get into intellectual property and design original characters and stories. India is not producing films of an international standard yet, but we will soon as India has some talented animators. 

Once he was asked how to get top in the animation Industry, he said,” You need to learn how to handle more and more complex jobs. For example, if you were a texturing artist, then you would learn how to create new textures that express a character and a model better, or if you are the person who puts the bones in the character, you would rig a character better so that the animator can handle it better. It's about mastering the software even more. There are lots of things you are not taught about the software at schools, and there is a skill to mastering it better and better. You also need to be adaptable and be able to learn new software other than the one you learnt at school and be able to handle more complex characters and perhaps even specialise in more than one area, like being able to be a hair and a texture artist. That would help you get noticed and go up the ladder”. He had worked like what he said. He had devolved many animators through his personal training and they are leading professionals in the animation industry in Today’s India. Bhimsain Khurana, animator and director Shilpa Ranade, director Suresh Eriyat, animator Ashish Kulkarni and film director Vaibhav More are some examples of his disciples.

Ram Mohan is the father of making Animation films in India. There was a small incident that happened in his life during his childhood.  Ram Mohan was living in the village of Central Kerala with his uncle where he was bitten by a snake. The help of modern medical facilities was impossible to reach immediately to that village. A local Doctor gave him medicine and told his uncle that he should not sleep for the whole night; otherwise, his survival would be difficult. His uncle started worrying and was not aware how to keep him awake the whole night. He became drowsy due to medicine and the poison of a snake. Ram Mohan’s eyes were blinking. It was a terrible situation.  Suddenly, an idea flashed through the mind of his uncle. His uncle knew that Ram Mohan was a storyteller and good listener of stories. He started telling the stories in such a way to Ram Mohan whose eyes widened and did not sleep for the whole night. Thus, a mischievous smile appeared on the face of little Ram Mohan which helped him to overcome the death in childhood and this smile continues forever till his death.

Every Animator should not only be a great story teller but also be a great observer and listener. He should speak little and look around and understand the real and emotional human thoughts. He should also watch the movement of other living things, the form of nature, the shape of objects, lines, colours and space. All his observations should appear on the paper.  Once they appear on the paper, then only the animator can properly make it on the screen. 

Such a great animator died on 11^th October 2019 in Mumbai at the age of 88.  Ram Mohan had a lot of bright ideas which have been left in our hearts. His inspiration work will always be remembered for years to come.

Thank You.