Possibilities were endless in Inside Out

As the Hollywood animation film Inside Out won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature Film, the celebration crackers were burst in Kerala too.
The film's character supervisor was the State's own Sajan Skaria. Both Sajan and his family have been flooded with calls of appreciations, but he says, 'It's the movie that won the award, I did not win it personally.' The man downplays his role, but animation film lovers can't ignore his noteworthy presence behind many successful Hollywood projects.A tete-e-tete with Sajan:
So, what does a character supervisor do? He tells us, 'Making a movie like Inside Out requires a huge team. My team creates the characters for the movies.' They apparently work with the art designers to create appealing characters that are suitable for the story, which the director is trying to tell, he explains. Sajan adds, 'We are the first to see the characters move and breathe; sometimes we spend years on a character before we move it into production where the animators can start animating the shots. As a supervisor, I'm answerable to both the director and the producer of the movie. So I have to make sure we create great characters without breaking the bank.'
But for Inside Out, the team faced an interesting challenge ' they didn't know what the characters should look like since the movie was set in the mind of a young girl. Sajan explains, 'Usually there are constraints which we can work around. For example in Cars, Lightning McQueen is a car; we could go and look at cars and touch them and learn about their properties before making them. Similarly for Toy Story, we could physically hold a plastic or plush toy and study them. But with the 'mind world' being the focus of Inside Out, the possibilities were endless. You can make the characters for a movie like this in any number of ways and that was the biggest challenge. In most cases it's good to have constraints or a box to work with.'
Sajan shares an interesting anecdote about Inside Out. 'During the making of the movie, we get to take our kids to watch early screenings to get their feedback. I took my daughter Esha, who was six years old at the time, to watch it. The next weekend, I was taking her to her swimming class. She was always afraid of jumping into the water. But this time she told me. 'Dad, I think fear is driving my mind. I'm going to ask him to step aside.' So she did that and ended up taking the dive. This was the first time I realised the profound implications of the movie.' Even as a kid, Sajan had a deep interest in sketching and cartooning. He recalls, 'While I was in school (Sarvodaya Vidyalaya, Nalanchira), my parents and art teacher Sankarankutty sir would take me to all the competitions in the area. So I was always in touch with my artistic side.' Following his schooling, Sajan pursued an undergraduate course in computer science at NIT Calicut, where he picked up an interest in computers and graphics. 'That was the time Toy Story released in theatres. Also big special FX movies like Jurassic Park and Jumanji were making the rounds. So it was only natural for me to explore the opportunities of making a career out my two interests- computers and graphics. From Bangalore, where I was working in an IT company, I wrote my GRE and headed to Texas to do my graduate studies in the field.'
While India has many talented technicians in animation and graphics, we don't have many world-class animation movies made here. Ask him why, and he says, 'In my personal view, I feel that we don't dive deep into exploring the story or the techniques.' Growing up in India, Sajan says he too was comfortable with the known world, and taking a risk or going out and exploring the cutting edge of things were very difficult. 'I'd love Indian artists to spend a lot more time and effort diving deeper into their projects and exploring the edges of their respective fields. Instead of being comfortable with the known world, get uncomfortable and shake things up with new, original projects,' urges Sajan.
Which is his most favourite character among all that he has created so far? 'My proudest moment was getting to work on Woody for Toy Story 3 - that to me was like getting to work on Mickey Mouse. The character I enjoyed working on the most though was the Captain from Wall-E!' Sajan signs off.
Inside out Inside Out is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film. The film is set in the mind of a young girl named Riley Andersen (Kaitlyn Dias), where five personified emotions ' Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) ' try to lead her through life as her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) move the family from Minnesota to San Francisco and she has to adjust to her new life