Me.The Voice - March ’09

Me.The Voice is the first Student’s Magazine of MAAC, Andheri.

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Me.The Voice March ’09 Issue

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Please find the Updated list here (Click here)

In our pursuit to advance the skill set of the students at MAAC, we the MAAC Student Council (MSC), bring to you – 6030. It’s an event positioned to have THIRTY seminars over a time span of SIXTY days. Considering the vastness of our industry, there are a lot of topics that we would like to include in these seminars currently the ones being outside the scope of our curriculum. The ideology behind this phenomenal event is to secure and keep more knowledge based programs at our reach. We are hoping to have our experienced MAAC faculty conduct these seminars and, your ever faithful support and guidance to make this an annual event. Just one event like this, would increase the knowledge base of the students immensely and tremendously decrease the gap between the faculties and students. At the end of each seminar, students would be encouraged to participate, under the guidance of the respective faculty conducting the seminar, in international contests for the related topic. Thus making MSC aim in confidence to bring home at least FIVE INTERNATIONAL AWARDS this year !

Note: If any students wants to register for the event, Please contact a council member.

Kindly forward this info to your friends too so that they too can have an opportunity to take part in 6030.

War of the Titans (WOT in short) is a month long event which has been initiated by the MAAC Student Council. It follows the production pipeline with pre-production, production and post production. Currently there is modeling/ texturing from production and digital/matte painting from pre-production. There are four different levels or arenas as we call it. Each arena has 8 participants. So, thirty two participants battle it out within each module.

What makes WOT different from other competitions is that we have students judging students with faculty as guest jury. It is a different approach where students learn and understand how a faculty member judges a student’s artwork and the reason behind the grades given to that artwork. You also learn to work as a team in collaborating or discussing how to mark your peers who are participating in the event.  You learn to challenge your own skills and creativity, as the levels go from the easiest to the toughest.

Each level consists of 8 participants. Judges for the 1st level are two faculty members.
2 winners are then chosen. These winners are the judges of the 2nd level and chose 2 winners as well. Winners from level 1 & level 2 are the judges for level 3 & chose 2 winners here as well. The 6 winners of the 3 levels will be the judges of the 4th level thereby declaring 2 more winners.

The 8 winners will receive medallions from MAAC and MSC and will have a final competition between them. The final round is judged by two faculty members again and only one winner emerges who is the TITAN of that module (model/ text or digital/ matte painting). That participant will receive a trophy from the institute stating that he is Titan.

War of Titans (phase 1), started on the 20th of January 2009 and finished on the 12th of February 2009. Promotions for the event started almost three weeks prior to the event. The Council members who managed the event were Nijil David, Anisha Motilal, Romil Surana, Pritam Danve & Wrisha Dutta. Promotions in the form of class to class announcements and registrations were conducted along with displaying posters which held information of the event dates. The event took off a lot faster by word of mouth too. Students became curious with all the activities and hype surrounding the event and began to inquire with Council members in regards to the event and for registration. They could register for the event either by taking the registration form and submitting their works into the maacserver or also by emailing their artworks to the council email address (council_andheri@maacmail.com).

Faculty members such as Ms. Meenu Panam and Mr. Ananta Deshmukh were requested to be the guest judges for digital/ matte painting and Mr. Rahul Mehta from MCS was asked to become the guest judge for Modeling. They had also set up the image references required for the competition which the selected participants would work on. They helped the winners judge the student works in the other levels too and gave them valuable pointers in which they could improve their work in future competitions as well.

With the fifty participants which were selected for the modeling and digital/ matte painting competition, there were sixteen winners in total from both modules from the four levels. Somnath Banerjee from level 1, Mustafa Sathalia and Prasad Morajkar from level 2, Amit Kumar and Saurabh Jain from level 3 and Parag Lavande, Jignesh Patel and Shubham Gupta from level 4 were the eight winners from digital/ matte painting who competed against each other in the final round. Sourabh Jain and Trilochan Naik from level 1, Deven Saxena and Ekta Parmar from level 2, Durgesh Jagtap and Prateek Shrivastav from level 3 and Satish Patel and Sarju Sharma from level 4 were the eight winners for modeling who went against each other in the final level for the modeling competition.

The rules were simple for the competition where they were given the image reference and were expected to complete it within the time frame of twelve hours. Each level was two days with six hours each day to complete the artwork. It was mentioned that the quality of the artwork was important more than completing the artwork. There were guidelines for the modelers to keep in mind such as loop structure, model above the grid, hypershade not to be used and so on. The digital/matte painters were given guidelines prior to each level depending on the output of the work that was expected from them. With this in mind integrity of the students towards their works were also looked at well. Certain participants were disqualified from the event in regards to liberties which they took that were not approved by the guest jurors and Council members.

All participants were awarded a certificate and badge (based on the level that competed in) for their participation and the winners were given a medallion during the closing ceremony held on 13th of February 2009. The Titans would be declared during the following week from the event and they would be awarded with a trophy and certificate for participating during the Annual Day event of MAAC. The Titan for Modeling and Titan for Digital/Matte Painting will have their names displayed on the Council board and also go in the Book of  Talents.

The next phase of War of Titans will start on the 2nd of March 2009 with Animation and Texturing/ Lighting module. For further information regarding registration and guidelines, contact any member of the Student Council.