People

He Adds Magic To Animation:
Hansjeet Singh Duggal

MANSI MOTWANI

Hansjeet Singh Duggal is a Visual Effects Artist currently residing in Orange, California, USA. Hailing originally from Punjab, he moved to the West Coast three years ago and is now a filmmaker at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.

The 27-year-old Animation Scientist has produced work that has been recognised with laurels such as the Students’ Emmy and Oscar.

Hansjeet earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce and later completed a Master’s Degree in Animation. Curious about this alteration, I asked him to elaborate on the switch in his academic interests. I then learned that he fell in love with drawing as an 8-year- old. He would recreate sketches from books and from memory alike.

Interestingly, he lost touch with his hobby during the course of his under-grad studies. In fact, he was all set to pursue his MBA when he discovered that he was eligible to follow his real passion at the Birla Institute of Technology in Jaipur.

Since then, animation has been a part of all of Hansjeet’s endeavours. His love for animation and knack for visual effects has allowed him to explore and be equally talented at related avenues like Augmented and Virtual Reality. He is currently working towards receiving a patent for one of his inventions in Augmented Reality.

With his technological invention, one can simply hold his/her phone camera over an image, which then comes to life. The programming (which is Hansjeet’s brainchild) enables each image to narrate a story of its own in visually creative ways.

He is excited about its use in furthering the healthcare and educational sectors. Already in talks with doctors from both USA and the subcontinent, he wants his creation to act as a pain and stress reliever for those undergoing dental treatments.

With United States facing a towering number of mental health-related issues, he also hopes that this will touch the lives of patients suffering from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Furthermore, he aspires to make use of his product for developing modernised methods of learning for medical students.

Currently, Hansjeet is reaching out to museums across the world in Canada, Columbia, USA and the subcontinent in order to propagate this idea, which has the potential of changing the way we learn history.

Last week, he flew to Brussels, Belgium to participate by invitation in the 3D Film Booster Event of Stereopsia 2017. Stereopsia is an annual global forum which brings together producers of 3D, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and X Reality (XR) projects.

In Brussels, Hansjeet showcased a project he has named ‘Freheit’, which he conceived with the help of Virtual Reality and a bunch of sketches. Freheit, he explains, is a story of sacrifice and hope; it is the tale of a young boy and his mother set in Nazi Germany at the time of World War II.

(A still from Freheit)

In 2014, a short animation film created by Hansjeet titled “a tribute” was premiered at the Sikh Arts and Film Festival (SAFF), the world’s leading Sikh Film Festival conducted annually in California by the Sikhlens Foundation.

Sikhlens aims to spread awareness about Sikh heritage and culture through art. In the 2017 edition of SAFF, Hansjeet led an Animation workshop for children.

Throughout the course of his professional life, Hansjeet has lent his skills to many governmental organizations, and has had several international clients from countries like Australia, Canada, Denmark and Japan.

Presently, Hansjeet is engaged with the animation for a documentary on the endangered marine life of California, at the head of which is a Columbian director. Earlier this month, Hansjeet gave a talk on ‘Human Rights: When
Governments Ignore the Law’ at an exhibition in Chapman University.

The exhibit featured his work in the Augmented Reality (AR) space. A reflection of the ideology he stands by is, in his words, “Art challenges technology. Technology inspires art.”


December 19, 2017
 

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