There’s more to animation than Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck! Animation is a medium to add creative features to a narrative, bringing it to life. Shaila Paralkar was India’s first female animator and the steady hand behind the design of the National Award-winning movie ‘The Thinker.’ In 1958, Paralkar accidentally stumbled into the field of animation when she was offered a summer internship to help pay for her applied arts classes at Sir JJ School of Art.
Paralkar created some of the best animated films over her 40 years at the Films Division of India (FDI), which received high praise both at home and abroad. Her anti-alcohol ad, ‘Bottled Cannibals,’ which she wrote herself, was shown at international film festivals in France, Moscow, Greece, and Portugal in 1979. A red alcohol bottle in the short instills dread in nearby tea kettles, cups, and saucers.
In the same year, the 5th International Film Festival in France, China, and Denmark aired ‘The Last Drop,’ a state award-winning save-oil campaign that shows a dropper’s rubber end deflating a globe.
She began as a Grade II artist at FDI and quickly rose through the ranks. Since she had responsibilities towards her family in Mumbai, she even declined a job offer from Walt Disney Studios. Her daughter Namrata Paralkar believes that her mother would have achieved a lot more if not for the politics in those days.
Paralkar never got to head the Cartoon Film Unit of the Films Division where she was the most talented and hard-working of them all. For whatever reason, she was shunned in this male-dominated area of animation. Not long before technology took off, she retired in 2000 at the age of 60. Up until 2021, she sewed sweaters for her loved ones, fashioned cufflinks into jewellery, and created beautiful rangoli patterns for Diwali each year. After a paralytic stroke brought on by her sister’s untimely death in 2022, her right side became immobile. She can no longer draw, knit or paint. The former Mumbaikar now lives in her lush, bird-friendly apartment in Pune, enjoying playing with her pets, which include dogs, cats, and fish.
Not everyone who uses sophisticated 2D and 3D software to create animation on a computer can adopt the more traditional method. A hand-drawn character’s movement is similar to math. The entire scene must be calculated before you begin your pencil sketch. Paralkar doesn’t have much awareness about AI and the threat it presents to animators. However, she’s seen enough computer-generated cartoons to realise that they’re nothing like ‘Tom & Jerry.’
Image source: Youtube