A Polymathic Journey Through the World of Art and Animation!
“Art for me is a language on its own, it could transcend anyone beyond all known boundaries.” A mere sketch or a painting of Balasubramanian Rajasekaran’s can tell a multitude of stories, which can subsequently evoke emotions and transport us to our past, present, future, or often to a unique world.
Interpretations of Beauty
Growing up in the artistic town of Tanjore, Balasubramanian spent much of his childhood surrounded by nature's beauty. This experience ignited a desire in him to express his own interpretation of her beauty through art. The rich art culture of Tamil Nadu only nurtured and fuelled his passion for this innate talent and inspired him in his early days of becoming an artist.
Discovering an Artist’s Identity
Initially, painting humbled Bala, causing him to become a self-critical individual. However, he embraced the process, learning to surrender, meditate, connect ideas, translate emotions, and take risks in his art. Each painting was a step forward, and through his art, he began to discover his own identity, building confidence in his introverted nature. He dedicated himself fully to the art, striving to become one with the universe and find bliss in the creative process. The lines between reality and imagination became blurred, and he continues to strive to capture this on canvas.
Mastering the Chaos of Realism
In his collection of paintings, he captures real and raw moments of everyday India. He sees nature as a source of endless imagery, especially in India where chaos and beauty coexist. To become a great artist, he believes one must first observe and express their surroundings through their work, and that nature is the best teacher. He considers mastering realism as the foundation and continues to study and strengthen his skills. To be a well-rounded creative artist, he believes it's important to understand and explore various elements such as stylization, graphic design and new technology.
Telling Stories Through Visual Scenes
Balasubramanian's unique style focuses on capturing the essence of a scene and its environment. This style was influenced by his years of experience working in animation, where he learned to simplify, design, and tell stories through visual scenes to convey ideas and emotions. He would often use forms, colours, and lighting to create drama and expressiveness in his animation work. To him, this is a fantastic way to tell stories through his artwork.
Bringing Art Forms Together: The Versatile World of Film Making
He regards the creation of films as a dynamic process where the collaboration of artists from various disciplines brings together different forms of art into an animated movie. To create a truly great film, one must possess a broad range of knowledge, from conceptualizing to executing the final product. As an animator, while it is essential to excel in acting, it is also crucial to master other disciplines to produce a flawless film.
Bridging the Gap between Creativity and Technical Expertise
Making films requires a lot of effort and time, and requires working with artists from a variety of disciplines to combine all the different forms of art into an animated movie. As a result, the director must be highly knowledgeable and skilled in more than one area to imagine, predict, and present the big picture. This enables him to connect the dots, innovate, bring together talented artists, push the quality bar, lead, inspire, bring out the best in everyone, and deliver the best-looking film.
Without these qualities, the director will have to rely on the talented artists on his team, but without big-picture thinking, he will not be able to make important decisions, which will frustrate the artists working for him, leading to a mediocre film.
A Journey Through Mediums
Every medium, in his opinion, has its grammar, advantages, and purposes. As a creative person, he approaches them all in many different ways. To see the bigger picture, connect the dots, to be creative, to generate ideas, to produce the best visual/animation/film, to break the monotony and innovate, one needs to be knowledgeable in several fields. Bala believes that animation has limitless potential, allowing for a wide range of stories to be told. These stories can transport us to the past, present, or future, or even to strange new worlds.
