He may have dared Maneka Gandhi and created artificial pigeons to shoot Paheli. But Shah Rukh Khan also gained an admirer for his production. The Amol Palekar directed movie charmed Shelly Page so much, that she decided to create a separate school in India for animation. Shelly is head of international outreach at DreamWorks, a Hollywood animation studio owned by movie mogul Steven Spielberg. Shelly, who has been working in the animation field since 1986, has worked on movies such as Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar amongst other animation superhits.

"Its remarkable what Red Chillies achieved in Paheli with a limited budget. I interacted with the team and they were all absolutely world-class animators," Shelly gushes. That interaction with Bollywood led to what Shelly's well-wishers now describe her as "obsessive". "I like to see what Bollywood will achieve in terms of animation. Already, there are world-class studios like Crayon, Prana, Prime Focus and so many others that are doing great work. I heard about Ajay Devgn's latest animation project Toonpur Ka Superhero and am waiting to see it on screen,"

Shelly believes that animation as an industry is yet to take off in India, but predicts that its rise will be exponential. "From the talent point of view, India is the biggest investment. It's just a question of resources and good design falling into place," she says. Surely, resources can no longer be a question what with Indian cinema producing animation heavy movies like Aladin, which incidentally won the Best Special Effects award at the Screen Awards this year. As for design, Shelly says, "Good design has to be like a movement where production design, art design and animation peaks at the right time." In fact, Shelly is in India to participate at an animation meet organised by Maya Academy of Advance Cinematics called National Students Meet. In her 90-minute lecture to animation students across India, Shelly's emphasis is on design.

The animation scene in India is fairly small and depends on goodwill, Shelly feels. "It's hard for people to trust here. I don't come here with any ulterior motive so I am accepted. But I think India needs an organisation like Cartoon. The Brussel-based organisation organises animation events, hosts financing sessions and is single handedly responsible for almost 300 animated movies taking off in Europe. I believe NASSCOM is doing something similar, but its scale is very small."

India's rich cultural inheritance of stories can be effectively turned into great animation movies. Shelley even cites Hanuman as an example, but cautions against temporary madness. According to her, animation studios tend to make a wildly ambitious film the first time around. "It's credible if a studio can pull it off, but otherwise, studios need to act with maturity when deciding the type of movies that can be animated." She says that if the audience here prefers romantic films, then they can be replicated into animated movies. As an example, she says Ghajini and 3 Idiots can be turned into animated movies and can be relied upon to generate success.

She comes back to the madness bit again when the topic of Avatar comes up. Shelly was bowled over by the movie like many others and predicts, "Even James Cameron will take time before he makes something like this again. To do something like that takes some doing," she says before pronouncing her verdict on animation. "Animation is a technique, not a genre. Your technique should make people think about the story without focussing on how you tell it. Avatar is a drama, not a 3-D movie."

On information exchange, Shelley says, "I don't think we hold back any technical expertise. Our studio in Bangalore has people who have given up their profession and entrusted us with their careers. We hire and train undergraduates at our California studio. We are spreading the word in IIT schools amongst computer and IT engineers and telling them animation is a viable career option."