Success Story : Himanshu Hazarika (Animation at IDC IIT-B)

Myself Himanshu Jyoti Hazarika, I was born and raised in the North-eastern state of Assam. I did my Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics & Telecommunication. Since my childhood I have a lust for painting and drawings which eventually tilted toward film and animation. It was my first attempt to CEED and getting a seat in IDC is really a surprise for me, as being an average student I always used to consider the IITians as elites

CRACKING CEED …

So CEED 2015 was on my birthday so was little bit excited also. To be very frank I didn’t got chance to prepare for it. At that time I was working at Bharti Infratel Ltd. in tower operations. As at bottom level telecom job used to be 24 x 7 in nature, I rarely used to get time to prepare.

For part A

I was always interested in current affairs so it helped me. Other than that grab any IBPS magazine solve it (arithmetic and aptitude) few weeks prior to CEED, if you can do that cracking part A is not a big deal. I followed some pervious CEED papers and filtered out the topics which I am going left and prepare the rest. (Like you can’t predict which logo they will ask you to identify, but if you know the shortcut of arithmetic you can answer any problem related to it). So select the portion which is your forte, after all it’s just for screening and in MCQs it may quite risky trying to attempt 100% if you are not sure with answers.

For part B

It is quite simple to crack if you keep practicing freehand sketches. I really faced problem in managing time as I didn’t get much time to practice due to my job. But my past experience in drawing and painting saved me.

Certain things which worked for me:

• 1.       Follow previous papers
• 2.       Practice geometrical shapes
• 3.       Focus on perspective and light & shadows
• 4.       Don’t go for detailing just try to present what has been asked in the question.
• 5.       Study some Simple human/animal gestures and positions. (In CEED the storyboard had one character of Eagle and I forgot how it looked like, but fortunately I saw one sitting on a tree in the entrance of the Examination Hall J)
• 6.       Practice pencil shading (Don’t think about using colours). If you can practice it well, it’s easy and fast way to bring out details with minimum number of tones.
• 7.       Practice memory drawings of various day to day objects.
• 8.       “Control your emotions”, if you are interested in a particular specialization and found a question from other domain easier and less time consuming don’t hesitate to attempt that. Don’t start thinking like you are cheating on your partner.
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Blunders I made during exam:

• 1.       Don’t touch the keyboard. While drawing the cooker (During 1^st question itself) by mistake I put my elbow over the keyboard. And it consumed around 5min-7min in allotting a new system.
• 2.       Decide which question you’ll attempt first.
• 3.       I devoted too much time in first question because of which I couldn’t able to finish the last one. So practice well and manage your time.
• 4.       In questions like framing stories with given words/characters go for what strikes you first. I spent too much time in trying to frame something out of the box story.

PREPARING PORTFOLIO …

After getting 81 rank, which I didn’t expected as I left 3 questions incomplete in Part B. I took a big risk in January 2015, I resigned from my job as it can be difficult for me to prepare the portfolio along with my hectic schedule (I am not suggesting to resign anyways). So I gave 1 month for my portfolio, I included one short animated clip (along with the sketches of key characters and storyboard), one comic strip, one short documentary, caricature of two friends and some digital art along with my old paintings.

DURING DAT …

Well this time I finished my comic strip J (As in CEED my storyboard was incomplete). This time I didn’t find it difficult to manage the time. In DAT we were asked to write a story and then make a comic strip based on that. It should be assumed that whoever appearing in DAT, are good in sketching, so where you can grab more points is the story. Here you’ll get decent amount of time so think for some time and frame the story nicely and at the same time imagine the scenes in your mind. Once I am done with the story, before started writing, I gave a brief introduction to the key characters (Name, age, and gender), situation and relation between the characters.

IN INTERVIEW...

First of all the panel was quite supportive, it was nice to interact with them. One thing which I was always following in all kind of interview I appeared till date is, I never present fake character to suit the organization’s needs and always tell the truth, whether I got short listed or not. And may be because of it one of the Professor in the IDC panel complimented me by saying that, “That’s why I like Northeast people, they always say the truth”.

 Whatever you present in your portfolio, keep ready with answers to every “WHY” and “HOW”. And if it’s your original work, surely you can and if you are making it by following someone else’s work then do mention about your inspiration in the beginning itself. And just keep smiling.

During interview they just watched my animated clip and asked some questions on it, looked at some old painting and rest all the questions were on my personal life like why I did Engineering, why I am switching for Engineering to Design, my hobbies and interests, etc.

THANKS TO …

I am really wants to thank my parents for their support in all ups and downs in my life.

I will always grateful to Mr Bhaskar Ganesh (Asst. Prof. NITS Mirza) for his consistent motivation.

I am thankful to Teacup Blog & Prasanna Gadkari Sir for his support, Ashwin Gandhi (DP-IITK) , Himujjal Sarma (Alumni, DoD-IITG), Anshumali Baruah (Alumni, IDC-IITB)