The Magical Art of Bringing Ideas to Life is Through Animation – Harmeet Kaur Saini
Animators have long enraptured us by crafting fictional worlds that feel as real as life itself. As digital technologies advance, animation continues expanding beyond entertainment into diverse fields like education, medicine, architecture and more. As graphic and animation expert Harmeet Kaur Saini puts it, "Animation offers endless creative possibilities to bring all ideas to life." Harmeet's own career exemplifies how animation intersects with various industries and geographies.
Born in Mumbai, she fell in love with animation early on through movies and games. She dedicated over 800 hours honing 2D and 3D software, earning certifications along the way. After Indian entertainment and ad projects, she moved overseas to study learning technologies, eventually becoming a video games and learning instructor herself. "Good animation develops crucial skills like storytelling, visual communication and time management,” she explains.
"As both an engaging teaching aid for kids and a means to prototype products or medical visualizations, animation impacts many fields. Today, animators are employed across sectors like marketing, healthcare, engineering and more to utilize animation’s visual power,” says Harmeet. Advanced technologies have expanded across various sectors like education where immersive videos, interactive models and gamified quizzes explain complex concepts intuitively or architecture where 3D walkthroughs showcase building designs to clients or product design where simulated models rapidly prototype and test innovations, and much more.
"Animation allows visualizing almost anything imaginable like abstract processes, fictional worlds, data patterns and many such things," notes Harmeet. Emerging technologies like augmented reality, AI and lifelike human avatars will stretch these use cases even further. "The Indian industry’s foundation lies in cost advantages, but we’re moving up the value chain through our skilled talent, IP creators and tech innovators," Harmeet adds. She herself has worked with Indian and international names including Angry Prash, Be YouNick, Soulja Boy and Grammy-nominated Tyla Yaweh. She emphasizes animators remain in high demand globally across entertainment as well as sectors like advertising, enterprise VR/AR and modular content production.
Harmeet highlights crucial skills for aspiring animators beyond just technical expertise saying one needs patience & perseverance along with long rendering hours and eye for detail, creativity for visualizing engaging worlds and characters, communication for explaining and collaborating effectively and accountability for delivering quality work on schedule. "The only limits are our imagination. The future remains filled with tremendous possibilities. We see how animation intersects with diverse fields by bringing ideas to life through visual storytelling. As technology progresses, its wondrous applications will only continue multiplying,” she concludes.