About me !

You can view some of my designs on

Skill set on windows platform:

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Illustrator

CorelDraw

Adobe PageMaker
HTML

JavaScript

Macromedia Dream weaver

Microsoft FrontPage
Macromedia Flash

Elastic Reality
Adobe Premier
3d studio max
Macromedia Director
Sound Forge

Present employee of http://theface.com/

What is Multimedia?

Multimedia means that computers information can be represented through audio, video and animation in addition to traditional media (i.e., text, graphics drawings, images).

Examples of Multimedia Applications:

Digital Video Editing and predication systems
Electronic Newspapers / Magazines
Games
Groupware
Home shopping
Interactive TV
Multimedia courseware
Video conferencing
Video – on – demand
Virtual reality

What is HyperText and HyperMedia?

Hypertext is a text which contains links to other texts. The term was invented by Ted Nelson around 1965. Hypertext is usually non-Linear.

Hypertext is Non-liner documents by clicking on hot spots in the text. The reader is immediately transported to related material in the document. Content table like views – such as the one at the left are provided. Navigation in the document is by hot spots of “overview” mechanisms.

HyperMedia is not constrained to be text-based. It can include other media, e.g., graphics, images and especially the continuous media – sound and video. Apparently, Ted Nelson was also the first to use this term.


The World Wide Web (WWW) is the best example of hypermedia applications.

URL : Universal Resource Locator

HTTP : Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

What is Multimedia Authoring Metaphors?

Authoring – the process of creating multimedia applications
Authoring metaphor is also known as authoring paradigm, is the methodology for authoring multimedia applications.

Examples:

Scripting Language Metaphor
Slide Show Metaphor
Hierarchical Metaphor
Iconic/Flow-control Metaphor
Card/Scripting Metaphor
Cast/Score/Scripting Metaphor

What is Media?

Vehicles by which massages are visualized to large group of prospects and their big aim are closing gap between the producer and the consumer.

Types of Media:

Broadcast
Radio
Television
Internet
Print Media

(a) Publication Media
· Newspapers and
· Magazines

(b) Direct Advertisement:
· Direct mail advertisement sent directly to readers of individually by mail, always prepaid to get response.
· Specialties.

Out of home media

Outdoor advertisements like-Balloons, hoarding, wall posters etc,.
Non – standardized sings: company logo, lit-up signal advertisements etc,.
Transit advertisements: Bus panels, inside trains etc,.

Other Media

Advertising as film.
Directly advertising. (Telephone)

What is communication?

Communication can be defined as sharing of information, ideas and attitudes of feelings with the help of words, tones and behavior. It is vital for gaining knowledge, to get help from others, to learn and acquire skills and to pass your own knowledge to others. Proper communication enables you to persuade or negotiate in a professional setup. You can easily pass your ideas to others because of your effective communication skills.

Why communication is difficult?

Communication depends on several factors. If facts are not understood properly then it should be taken into consideration that the communicator is having some problem in conveying his/her ideas to the counterpart. Because of the communicator’s improper body language or wrong attitude of the feeling towards the target person it may lead to a situation where it is impossible to deliver ideas without any hassles.

Communication Process:
Sender’s ideas
Conversion in words (decoding)
Transmission (Channels)
Receiver’s senses
Receiver’s understanding

The message:
Receiver’s Fillers Sender / Transmitter Filters
Facts
Perceive feelings Visuals Facts
Message attitudes Tones Feelings
Words Attitudes

Barriers to communication

1. Cross cultural barriers
2. Stereotypes and myths
3. Misinterpretation and selection
4. Lack of trust

How to Avoid Barriers?

1. Listening
2. Concentrating
3. Consensus

Types of Communication

1. Interpersonal Communication
2. Intrapersonal Communication
3. Group Communication
4. Mass Communication

1. Interpersonal Communication:

It is the communication that takes places between two people. For example if Andy is taking with Jack, then the communication taking place is said to be “Interpersonal” communication. It is a type of communication continues based on the feedback the participants give and receive.

(Feedback: - Any verbal or non-verbal cue that facilitates the communication process. For example nodding of head, saying ‘yes’ when the other person is taking etc,.)

2. Intrapersonal Communication:

It is the communication-taking place within one self. It is usually identified with ones thought process. For example when a person does some introspection, he is said to be involved in interpersonal communication. When a person interacts with himself and calculating his thoughts, is known as Intrapersonal Communication

3. Group Communication:

When groups of people interact together for a common issue of purpose. E.g. Meeting among Principal and Professors. It is the communication-taking place within a relatively small group. The binding factor is that, it is a homogeneous group. People coming together for a common purpose or with similar objectives. For example the communication-taking place inside a classroom is said to be Group communication, here the provision for Feedback is also immediate.

4. Mass Communication:

It is the communication-taking place within a relatively large group. Basic advantage of mass medium / communication is its reach. Mass communication reaches a very large population at the same time. For example communication through TV or Radio is Mass Communication.

The disadvantage of Mass communication is that the provision for feedback is negligible and always delayed. It is a one way communication and ideas presented cannot be checked of clarified.

What is Creativity?

It is something off beat trying to be different from what is known clever use of positive or negative point in a creative manner. Necessaries for an advertisement to have recalled value, strike and register. But it should be remembered that the main aim of advertisement is to sell the product. So the purpose of the advertisement comes first and creativity is secondary.


Creativity is the bringing into being something, which did not exist before, either as a product, a process or a thought.


You would be demonstrating creativity if you:
Invent something which has never existed before.
Invent something which exists elsewhere but you are not aware of.
Invent a new process for doing something.
Reapply an existing process or product into a new of different market.
Develop a new way of looking at something (bringing a new idea into existence).
Change the way someone else looks at something.


Creativity is highly acknowledged and valued.
Creativity is not an aim/end in itself. It is not valued for its own sake
From Clients point of view – good advertising is that, which sells.
Selling and creativity are far from being mutually exclusive, interdependent.

Some information about colors:

Colour also spelled COLOR, defined generally, the aspect of any object that may be described in terms of hue, lightness and saturation. Color is a personal, mental experience. This received as reflected transmitted of radiated light from an object to our eyes. Hence, to realize colors, we need two essential things, viz., light and an object. Light is that form of radiation to which our eye is sensitive. It is a very narrow region in the wide region of the electromagnetic spectrum. White light is made up of a spectrum of seven groups viz., Violet, Indigo blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red (VIBGYOR). The colors of the spectrum are the basic building blocks of a much wider range, types of colors.

In physics, colour is associated specifically with electromagnetic radiation of a certain range of wavelengths visible to the human eye. Radiation of such wavelengths comprises that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum known as the visible spectrum – i.e., light.

Object can reflect light of transmit the light incident on them. Colors can be combined to produce other colors. When one color is added to another color, the combination color is called Additive Color. When one or more color is removed from white the colors that re not absorbed produce what is known as a Subtractive Color.

Color Models:

The human eye perceives color according to the wavelength of the light that reaches it. Light that contains the full color spectrum appears as pure white light. In the absence of light, the eye perceives black.

The properties of color can be mathematically defined using one of several color models. Three of the most common models are:

Hue, Saturation and Brightness (HSB)

The HSB model is based on the human perception of color. In the HSB model, all colors are described in terms of three fundamental characteristics:

Hue is the wavelength of light reflected from or transmitted through an object. More commonly, hue is identified by the name of the color, such as red, orange of green. Hue is measured as a location on the standard color wheel and expressed as a specific angle between 0 degree and 360 degree .

Saturation, sometimes called Chroma, is the strength of purity of the color. Saturation represents the amount of gray in relation to the hue and is measured as a percentage from 0 percent (grey) to 100 percent (fully saturated).

Brightness is the relative lightness of darkness of the color and is usually measured as a percentage from 0 percent (black) to 100 percent (white).

Red, Green and Blue (RGB)

Mixing three basic components of colored light in various proportions can represented a large percentage of the visible spectrum. These components are known as the primary colors: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). When the three primary colors overlap, they create the secondary colors Cyan Magenta and Yellow.

Since the primary colors combine to create white, they also called additive colors. Adding all the colors together create white that is all the light is reflected back to the eye. Additive colors are used to lighting video, film recorders and monitors.

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK)

While the RGB model depends on a light source to create color the CMYK model is based on the absorbing quality of ink printed on paper. As white light strikes translucent inks, a portion of the spectrum is absorbed. Color that is not absorbed is reflected back to your eye.

In theory, pure cyan, magenta and yellow pigments should combine to absorb all color and produce black, for this reason they are also called subtractive colors. Because all printing inks contain some impurities, these three inks actually produce a muddy brown and must be combined with black ink to produce a true black.

The primary and secondary colors are complementary colors. Two subtractive colors create a primary color; two primary colors create a subtractive color.

The CMYK model is used in four-color process printing. In this process, combining four inks reproduces color: Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y) and Black (K). The letter K is used to avoid confusion, because B might also stand for Blue.

Color Attributes:

· Age
· Appearance
· Associations
· Fashion
· Impulse
· Markets
· Moods
· Personality
· Preferences
· Presentation
· Products
· Recognition
· Reflectance
· Regional
· Seasons
· Sex
· Shape
· Stability
· Taste
· Tradition
· Visibility
· Warmth

Graphic Design

The graphic design of the screen is crucial to an effective IMM (Interactive Multimedia). Graphic design of screen design provides the visual communication necessary to transmit a message in an attractive way. It is easy in particular to believe that the written word is the only important factor in communicating the message to the user. This is because we have learnt over many years to abstract information from the printed word. Users also have a range different using styles and one of the advantages of IMM is that it can potentially accommodate these different styles. Therefore, the IMM must have an effective screen design to communicate to all types of users. Some users will some more from a picture or animation than they will from a description. For all these reasons, effective screen design is crucial. This section discusses the basic fundamentals of screen design. So, that a developer can appreciate the issues involved. Special skills and talents are required to be able to produce good screen designs and hence specialist assistance will be required in this area. Designing for the computer screen differs from printed design in that light is transmitted, whereas with printed matter light is absorbed by pigments in the ink and by the paper. The screen resolution of 72 dots per inch (dpi) is much less than the achievable in print. These factors introduce a new set of criteria of which to be aware when planning visual displays for use screen design

An overview of Screen Design / Graphic Design:

The term ‘Graphic design’ describes the planning and thought process necessary to create effective visual communication. There are several issues to consider when compiling a screen design and the following subsections consider the various elements of the design. It should be noted that there are no hard and fast rules associated with screen design. All that can be provided is a serious of guidelines which assist the designer to construct ways and means of communicating visual metaphors. Many initial aspects of screen design can be done most effectively with scissors and paper. The brief is the description of the subject matter of concept. However you choose to address it, the brief needs conscious planning. Each image must have a meaning, as should each use pf type, color, line, space, plane, shape, scale, balance and texture. All these combine to create a visual language which communicates the concept to the viewer. Layout once the concept has been decided upon, the next step is to determine a layout which will communicate the intention of each screen. An effective layout can make complex information easier to understand. When planning a layout, keep in mind that, in the /English-speaking world, we are culturally conditioned to read a page from top left to bottom right. This makes the top left corner the primary focal point or the place where the eye will initially look when presented with a page of screen. Design decisions can be made to allow for this tendency by placing the dominant element in this position. Alternatively, emphasis can be placed on other areas of the screen by implementing other design strategies. For example, the eye will generally travel from the largest screen element to the smallest. Careful consideration of color can have the same effect; the eye being led to the strongest of darkest color first. The standard layouts shown in are examples of well-balanced alternative ways of leading the eye to different parts of the screen. Whichever one is chosen will be determined by the types of individual screen elements which are involved and their relative importance. It is a good idea to work within the framework of the final screen size to enable more precise positioning of each element. Paper cut-outs can be used to represent text and graphics and can then be moved around to achieve the best results of the shapes and sizes require can just be penciled in roughly. Many computer hours will be saved by working out a rough sketch beforehand. This will also allow other members of the design team to proceed with their tasks.

What is Bit-Map?

A representation for the graphic/image data in the same manner as they are stored in video memory.

There are two types of graphics – a) Bitmap/Raster Graphics and b) Vector Graphics

What is Bitmap / Raster Graphics?

Bitmap graphics also called raster graphics. Use a grid of small squares known as pixels to represent graphics.

Each pixel in a bitmap image has a specific location and color value assigned to it. While working in bitmap images you edit pixels rather than objects of shapes. Bitmap images are resolution dependent, that is they represent a fix number of pixels as a result they can appear jagged and large detail if they are scale on screen of if they are printed at higher resolution then they were created form.

Software example of raster graphics – Adobe Photoshop, MS-paint etc,.

What is Vector Graphics?

It describes graphics according to their geometrics characteristics. You can move, resize of change the color of the image without losing the quality of a graphics.

A vector graphics is not resolution dependent that is you can scale it to any size and print on any output device at any resolution without loosing clarity.

Software example of Vector graphics – Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand etc,.

What is resolution?

No or pixels in a digital image (higher resolution always yields better quality).

What is pixel?

Picture elements in digital images or a unit of digital image.

Text using for graphic design:

Text

If you are using only a few paragraphs of text at a time, limited text facilities may be acceptable. However, if you have large bodies of text to incorporate, there are a number of features you may require.

Import – Can the package import large text files and in what format.

Editing – What kind of word processing features does the package text editor provide. Search and replace and spell checking may be of particular use.

Display – how are large amounts of text displayed, for example, will the package automatically provide scroll bars where necessary or do you have to ensure text is always visible.

The term VIDEO EDITING can refer to:

Non-linear editing system, using computers with video editing software

Linear video editing, using videotape

Video editing is the process of re-arranging or modifying segments of video to form another piece of video. The goals of video editing are the same as in film editing — the removal of unwanted footage, the isolation of desired footage, and the arrangement of footage in time to synthesize a new piece of footage.

Early video recorders were very expensive, and the quality loss of copying was so great, that 2 inch Quadruplex videotape was edited by visualizing the recorded track with ferrofluid, cutting with a razor blade or guillotine cutter and splicing with tape. Improvements in quality and economy, and the invention of the flying erase head, allowed new video to be inserted cleanly into an existing tape. This technique was referred to as linear editing. If an early scene needed to be lengthened, all the later scenes would need to be added again. Multiple sources could be played back simultaneously through a vision mixer to be mixed or keyed.

Modern non-linear editing systems are computer-based, though there was a transitional analog period using multiple source VCRs or LaserDisc players. Footage is played into a computer and captured on a hard drive. Editors use software such as Avid's Media Composer and Xpress Pro, Apple's Final Cut Pro, and Adobe's Premiere to manipulate the captured footage. High definition video is becoming more popular and can be readily edited using the same software along with related motion graphics programs. Clips are arranged on a timeline, music tracks and titles are added, effects can be created, and the finished program is "rendered" into a finished video. The video may then be distributed in a variety of ways including DVD, web streaming, Quicktime Movies, iPod, CD-ROM, or videotape.

For the home market, consumer-friendly products such as Adobe Premiere Elements, AVID Express DV, Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Studio, ULead VideoStudio, Roxio Easy Media Creator, Magix Movie Edit Pro and muvee autoProducer have come on the market with the emergence of computer video editing for the home PC. Two free programs that are bundled with computers are Apple's IMovie and Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker.

Video editing software

Video editing software is application software which handles the editing of video sequences on a computer. In the simplest case the video is stored as JPEG image files in a directory. The software typically shows one image on a large area on the screen and a view of the directory. To handle many files in the directory, it is possible to zoom out, so that a single file only covers one pixel-line in the editor, or even less, for rough cutting. A play button lets the software automatically advance to the next image, thus playing the video. Additionally JPEG images can be losslessly rotated 90 degree or mirrored and hence the editing software also supports this. Of course multiple files at once can be selected for any such operation. In this respect it is very similar to slide show editing software. Like slide show editing software comes with a lot of image file format decoders video editing software comes with a lot of video codecs. Video editing software generally also allows for some limited editing of the audio clips which accompany the video, or at least the ability to sync the audio with the video.

At the cost of decreasing the image quality it can add special effects and transitions; and it sometimes includes the ability to encode the video for creation of a DVD, Web video, mobile phone video, or video podcast.

Media 100, Lightworks, Sony Vegas, Avid, Adobe Premiere, Ulead VideoStudio and Apple's Final Cut Pro are pioneers in video editing software and have a great influence on how films and TV programs are edited. The most popular of these programs are Avid, Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro (in no particular order). Some of these systems use custom hardware for video processing.

Several other software programs can be classified in this category, including Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, NERO 8 Ultra, GEAR Software's GEAR Video, Pinnacle Systems' MediaSuite, muvee Technologies' muveeNow and autoProducer. Virtual Dub is a popular Open Source video editor with some powerful features, but lacks the intuitive drag-and-drop timeline interface of high priced editors.

With the availability of commodity video processing specialist video editing cards, and computers designed specifically for non-linear video editing, many software packages are now available to work with them.

Computer animation

Computer animation is the art of creating moving images via the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation. Increasingly it is created by means of 3D computer graphics, though 2D computer graphics are still widely used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time rendering needs. Sometimes the target of the animation is the computer itself, but sometimes the target is another medium, such as film. It is also referred to as CGI (Computer-generated imagery or computer-generated imaging), especially when used in films.

To create the illusion of movement, an image is displayed on the computer screen then quickly replaced by a new image that is similar to the previous image, but shifted slightly. This technique is identical to how the illusion of movement is achieved with television and motion pictures.

Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the art of stop motion animation of 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. For 3D animations, objects (models) are built on the computer monitor (modeled) and 3D figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton. For 2D figure animations, separate objects (illustrations) and separate transparent layers are used, with or without a virtual skeleton. Then the limbs, eyes, mouth, clothes, etc. of the figure are moved by the animator on key frames. The differences in appearance between key frames are automatically calculated by the computer in a process known as tweening or morphing. Finally, the animation is rendered.For 3D animations, all frames must be rendered after modeling is complete. For 2D vector animations, the rendering process is the key frame illustration process, while tweened frames are rendered as needed. For pre-recorded presentations, the rendered frames are transferred to a different format or medium such as film or digital video. The frames may also be rendered in real time as they are presented to the end-user audience. Low bandwidth animations transmitted via the internet (e.g. 2D Flash, X3D) often use software on the end-users computer to render in real time as an alternative to streaming or pre-loaded high bandwidth animations.

Computer animation development equipment

Computer animation can be created with a computer and animation software. Some examples of animation software are: Amorphium, Art of Illusion, Poser, Ray Dream Studio, Bryce, Maya, Blender, TrueSpace, Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, SoftImage XSI, Alice, and Adobe Flash (2D). There are many more software options available. Prices will vary greatly depending on target market. Some impressive animation can be achieved even with basic programs; however, the rendering can take a lot of time on an ordinary home computer. Because of this, video game animators tend to use low resolution, low polygon count renders, such that the graphics can be rendered in real time on a home computer. Photorealistic animation would be impractical in this context.

Professional animators of movies, television, and video sequences on computer games make photorealistic animation with high detail. This level of quality for movie animation would take tens to hundreds of years to create on a home computer. Many powerful workstation computers are used instead. Graphics workstation computers use two to four processors, and thus are a lot more powerful than a home computer, and are specialized for rendering. A large number of workstations (known as a render farm) are networked together to effectively act as a giant computer. The result is a computer-animated movie that can be completed in about one to five years (this process is not comprised solely of rendering, however). A workstation typically costs $2,000 to $16,000, with the more expensive stations being able to render much faster, due to the more technologically advanced hardware that they contain. Pixar's Renderman is rendering software which is widely used as the movie animation industry standard, in competition with Mental Ray. It can be bought at the official Pixar website for about $5,000 to $8,000. It will work on Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows based graphics workstations along with an animation program such as Maya and Softimage XSI. Professionals also use digital movie cameras, motion capture or performance capture, bluescreens, film editing software, props, and other tools for movie animation.

Amateur animation

The popularity of sites such as YouTube, which allows members to upload their own movies for others to view, has created a growing number of what is often considered amateur computer animators. With many free utilities available and programs such as Windows Movie Maker, anyone with the tools can have their animation viewed by thousands. Many high end animation software is also available on a trial basis, allowing for educational and non-commercial development with certain restrictions. One way to create amateur animation is using the GIF format, which can be uploaded and seen on the web easily. GIF animating software include Beneton Movie GIF, GIF Movie Gear, Ulead GIF Animator, and more.

Animated Movies

Movies

CGI short films have been produced as independent animation since 1976, though the popularity of computer animation (especially in the field of special effects) skyrocketed during the modern era of U.S. animation. The first completely computer-generated television series was ReBoot, and the first completely computer-generated animated movie was Toy Story, in 1994 and 1995 respectively.

Animation Market in India !

India's animation sector is witnessing a major boom. Overseas entertainment giants like Walt Disney, Imax and Sony are increasingly outsourcing cartoon characters and special effects to India. Other companies are outsourcing animation from India for commercials and computer games.

So what makes India a hub for animation? Why is the sector experiencing exponential growth? In this special series, we take a look at what makes India shine in the world of animation.
A full-fledged feature film called Tommy and Oscar is in the final stages of production at the Toonz Animation Studio, Technopark, Kerala. A team of artists and technicians is working frenetically to complete the film for the Italian producer Rainbow Productions.

Applied Gravity, a New Zealand-based company, has outsourced nearly 90 per cent of it animation work to Nipuna Services, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Satyam Computer Servcies. An animatronics dog for Animal Planet (Discovery channel) for a popular episode called K9 to11 and animatronics models for New Zealand theme parks were some of the best-known creations of Applied Gravity in India.

The Walt Disney Company has outsourced some of its major animation projects to various studios across India. Cartoon Network is buying animation films made in India. MTV has added India to its outsourcing hub along with the Philippines and South Korea.
A new outsourcing fever has gripped India.

Global entertainment majors like Walt Disney, Imax, Warner Brothers and Sony are signing up huge contracts with Indian animation companies and cities in India like Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Trivandrum have emerged as the country's major animation hubs.

A slew of companies across these cities have dedicated themselves to the outsourced world of animation and special effects. These include Toonz Animation, Crest Communications, Maya Entertainment, Silvertoon Studio, UTV Toons, Zee Institute of Creative Arts, 2NZ Studios, Pentamedia Graphics , Prasad Studios, Acropetal, JadooWorks, Color Chips and Heart Animation.

These animation firms have set up large production studios that are equipped with state-of -the-art equipment and hardware and software like SGI, 3DMax and SoftImage, SFX and processing motion capture facilities.

"Work is pouring in from places like the United States, Europe and Asia in the form of outsourced projects and co-production deals," points out P Jayakumar, Chief Executive Officer of Toonz Animation, arguably India's biggest animation player.

Toonz Animation is a complete state-of-the-art facility, staffed with internationally trained creative professionals from around the world. Its primary studio, Studio A, is located at Technopark in Trivandrum where over 400 artists and technicians create animated 2D and 3D films.

Jayakumar says Toonz formats include episodic television animation, ad films, direct-to-video and feature length.

Animation veterans like Jayakumar says that India has become an outsourcing hub for animation films because:

India has a vast base of English speaking workforce: Animation, which requires familiarity with the English language, benefits when the work is outsourced to India. A number of animation companies in the country are also creating skilled manpower for the animation market through various training programmes.

Presence of good studios: India has the second largest entertainment industry in the world, after Hollywood. Animation studios in the country provide a large supply of low-cost, high-quality software engineers. A number of Indian animation companies have set up hi-tech studios (equipped with state-of-the-art hardware and software) to execute overseas projects.

Low cost of animation services: The main reason why foreign entertainment firms are flocking to India is the cost advantage the country offers. For instance, in the US, animators can cost about $125 an hour; in India, they cost $25 an hour. Toonz Animation offers animation at 25 per cent to 40 per cent lower rates than other Asian studios and much lower than those of American studios.

The total cost for making a full-length animated film in America is estimated to be $100 million to $175 million. In India, it can be made for $15 million to $25 million.

C K Prahlad, an animation consultant based in Bangalore, says the biggest advantage is the cost factor. "Indian animation companies are charging extremely low rates compared to other countries. That is attracting the Hollywood companies to outsource their animation film series to the country," he said.

Major US animation studios and producers are realizing this huge cost advantage that India offers.

"Due to changing viewing habits, channels or networks are being forced to bring down licence fees. As a result, the volume of work has been dropping.

In this situation, India's advantage of low production costs could be a boon to the domestic animation industry," said Margaret Dean, Sony Pictures' head of family entertainment group and a consultant to various animation studios in the US, during a recent India visit.

According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the total revenues of the animation production services sector in India were estimated by between $200 million and $300 million in 2004.

Nasscom estimates the animation sector grew at a rate of over 20 per cent last year. "Demand for animation production services from India is growing with the emergence of an organised animation production sector, with state-of -the-art of work required for international TV program production, at substantially lower costs," a Nasscom report said.

Last year, a Nasscom study on the animation industry showed that the global animation production market is set for major growth. The study, which is based on multiple statistical projections on the market, from segments such as industry sources, Pixel Inc and Arthur Andersen (Study on the Entertainment and Media sector) forecast that the global animation market would generate revenues worth $50-70 billion this year.

But which are the countries that India is competing with in getting animation outsourcing?
"Primarily, we are competing with China. But even here, our quality standards are much higher than Chinese studios," argues Jayakumar.

Web Design

• Web site design

Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies (such as markup languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

The intent of web design is to create a web site (a collection of electronic files residing on one or more web servers) that presents content (including interactive features or interfaces) to the end user in the form of web pages once requested. Such elements as text, forms, and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed on the page using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) usually requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web pages by using HTML or XHTML tags.

Improvements in the various browsers' compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance of XHTML and XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements. The latest standards and proposals aim at leading to the various browsers' ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.

Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master or programmer) manually updates the page.

Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on the end-user’s input or interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user's computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript, media players and PDF reader plug-ins, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (PHP, ASP, Perl, Coldfusion, JSP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications.

With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

A Web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a web site is defined as the arrangement and creation of web pages that in turn make up a web site. A web page consists of information for which the web site is developed. A web site might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page.

There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For non-commercial web sites, the goals may vary depending on the desired exposure and response. For typical commercial web sites, the basic aspects of design are:

The content: the substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.
The usability: the site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.

The appearance: the graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.

The visibility: the site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.

A web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a web site is known as the Home page or Index. Some web sites use what is commonly called a Splash Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language or region selection, or disclaimer. Each web page within a web site is an HTML file which has its own URL. After each web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention spans and more demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash Pages, particularly where commercial web sites are concerned.
Once a web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published, the web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the web site receives. This may include submitting the web site to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other web sites, creating affiliations with similar web sites, etc.

Flash

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary, robust graphics animation or application development program used to create and deliver dynamic content, media (such as sound and video), and interactive applications over the web via the browser.

Flash is not a standard produced by a vendor-neutral standards organization like most of the core protocols and formats on the Internet. Flash is much more restrictive than the open HTML format, though, requiring a proprietary plugin to be seen, and it does not integrate with most web browser UI features like the "Back" button.

According to a study, 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed. Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

Many graphic artists use Flash because it gives them exact control over every part of the design, and anything can be animated and generally "jazzed up". Some application designers enjoy Flash because it lets them create applications that do not have to be refreshed or go to a new web page every time an action occurs. Flash can use embedded fonts instead of the standard fonts installed on most computers. There are many sites which forgo HTML entirely for Flash. Other sites may use Flash content combined with HTML as conservatively as gifs or jpegs would be used, but with smaller vector file sizes and the option of faster loading animations. Flash may also be used to protect content from unauthorized duplication or searching. Alternatively, small, dynamic Flash objects may be used to replace standard HTML elements (such as headers or menu links) with advanced typography not possible via regular HTML or CSS Flash detractors claim that Flash websites tend to be poorly designed, and often use confusing and non-standard user-interfaces. Up until recently, search engines have been unable to index Flash objects, which has prevented sites from having their contents easily found. This is because many search engine crawlers rely on text to index websites. It is possible to specify alternate content to be displayed for browsers that do not support Flash. Using alternate content also helps search engines to understand the page, and can result in much better visibility for the page. However, the vast majority of Flash websites are not disability accessible (for screen readers, for example) or Section 508 compliant. An additional issue is that sites which commonly use alternate content for search engines to their human visitors are usually judged to be spamming search engines and are automatically banned.

The most recent incarnation of Flash's scripting language (called "ActionScript", which is an ECMA language similar to JavaScript) incorporates long-awaited usability features, such as respecting the browser's font size and allowing blind users to use screen readers. Actionscript 2.0 is an Object-Oriented language, allowing the use of CSS, XML, and the design of class-based web applications. ActionScript 3.0 has a similar syntax to ActionScript 2.0 but different set of APIs for creating objects.

CSS versus tables

When Netscape Navigator 4 dominated the browser market, the popular solution available for designers to lay out a Web page was by using tables. Often even simple designs for a page would require dozens of tables nested in each other. Many web templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use this technique today. Navigator 4 didn't support CSS to a useful degree, so it simply wasn't used.

After the browser wars subsided, and the dominant browsers such as Internet Explorer became more W3C compliant, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what's going on in a web page. All modern Web browsers support CSS with different degrees of limitations.

However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts, developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today, though, designing with reasonable adherence to standards involves little more than applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.

These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design. However, the W3 Consortium has made CSS in combination with XHTML the standard for web design.

Form vs. Function

Some web developers have a graphic arts background and may pay more attention to how a page looks than considering other issues such as how visitors are going to find the page via a search engine. Some might rely more on advertising than search engines to attract visitors to the site. On the other side of the issue, search engine optimization consultants (SEOs) are concerned with how well a web site works technically and textually: how much traffic it generates via search engines, and how many sales it makes, assuming looks don't contribute to the sales. As a result, the designers and SEOs often end up in disputes where the designer wants more 'pretty' graphics, and the SEO wants lots of 'ugly' keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text links. One could argue that this is a false dichotomy due to the possibility that a web design may integrate the two disciplines for a collaborative and synergistic solution. Because some graphics serve communication purposes in addition to aesthetics, how well a site works may depend on the graphic designer's visual communication ideas as well as the SEO considerations.

An additional concern website owners face is that of Usability. This factor involves the ability of the user (web site visitor) to interact with the web site and perform the tasks most important to the web site owner. For instance a web site that sells cars would want to make the process of buying a car as easy and thought free as possible. Ideas like this populate the web design community, and experts like Steve Krug have emerged.

Another problem when using lots of graphics on a page is that download times can be greatly lengthened, often irritating the user. This has become less of a problem as the internet has evolved with high-speed internet and the use of vector graphics. This is an engineering challenge to increase bandwidth in addition to an artistic challenge to minimize graphics and graphic file sizes. This is an on-going challenge as increased bandwidth invites increased amounts of content.