Amitabh Sharma, Features Coordinator

In today's world, information with impact is becoming the buzzword. Multimedia has become a one-stop solution for such communication demands. With its ability to integrate various media elements like text, graphics, animation, audio and video with computer interactivity, it truly produces powerful applications ranging from entertainment to educational tutors.

Multimedia tools span a wide spectrum from video and sound editing to special effects, virtual reality, animation, games and interactive multimedia programming.

Multimedia can be a lot of fun, especially as you grow from an uninitiated individual to a professionally acclaimed person. All that is required to be a multimedia professional is the ability to persevere and work hard, visualise, logically understand the concept of design, and implement it clearly. An overview of avenues for the multimedia professional:

Publishing

Print media is one of the oldest areas of work and to date has captured the biggest share in the global media market. Due to its wider acceptance and deliverability, it holds a confirmed berth in the industry in the coming years. With network publishing storming the way, publishing has acquired newer and broader dimensions. Network publishing refers to the vision of making visually rich, personalised digital content available anytime, anywhere and on any device.

There are several recognised government and non-government institutions located across the country, where one can learn the art of design and development of printing technology and digital print media.

Entertainment

With the boom in the information technology (IT) industry and the emergence of cable TV and convergent entertainment segments, this medium has a lot to look forward to. The industry employs trained professionals in the roles of graphic designers, cameramen, sound recordists, compositors, games design specialists and animators.

The best prospects lie with emerging international markets. Any one of the aforementioned positions could make one a professionally acclaimed figure in the industry.

Interactive multimedia and the Web

The surge in the IT industry saw the rise of the Internet - a new channel of communication that opened the gateway to the global community. Unarguably, the rise and growth in this field was the fastest among all. With the arrival of e-commerce and interactive portals, the Internet has provided tremendous opportunities to multimedia specialists, and could be said to be the best example of multimedia application to date. Apart from the Internet, interactive CD creation has also made a significant growth in the multimedia industry. The career opportunities in this field are huge and growth prospects are unimaginable. A person with vision can climb to the top in no time.

Fashion and Interior designing

Fashion design and technology has become so popular that it has now become a status symbol to be associated with this industry.

By incorporating multimedia technologies, the world of fashion has changed irrevocably in the last few years to offer various options to designers. Computer-aided design (CAD), a part of multimedia technology, has had considerable impact on the work of fashion designers.

Computerised designing makes it easy and effective and is highly being used in fashion industry. CAD allows a designer to create accurate technical sketches, which in turn can be flood filled with any pattern, texture or colour, saving time-consuming work of shading the same design in different colour, ways and fabrications.

Animation

Animation is one of the fastest growing IT enabled services. Animation application areas include entertainment (movies, television), business (marketing demos, product promos), sales (presentations), education (computer-based training /web-based training), tourism (kiosks), publishing (graphics & printing), web design, virtual reality for simulations in defence, engineering, advertising (commercials, print ads), interiors and fashion design.

Visualisers, ink and paint artists, special-effects persons, character animators and modelling artists are some of the professionals required for completing the animation constitution.

Special Effects

Though SFX may be part of other industries such as entertainment, advertising and animation, its massive use in all forms of interactive presentation has made it a prime force in today's multimedia savvy world. Advertisements, films, games, CBTs and a plethora of other mediums use special effects to spice up their content.

You can learn SFX from good high-end animation institutes. For those who demonstrate some degree of talent in this industry, the possibilities are plentiful.

Gaming

There are five main departments at the average game company: art, design, programming, sound, and support. Many companies divide each into subcategories. Art departments, for example, are often divided into 2D and 3D art, and animation, while the programming team may be split up to focus on AI, technology, and game play. At this point, general department classifications give way to specific job functions.

This field holds immense promise for those looking to make a career in an upcoming yet exciting field.

Advertising

The field of advertising, both on and off line, has been one of the key beneficiaries of multimedia technologies. Digital advertising is being used extensively by organisations today. Multimedia specialists use multiple types of media; text, graphics, sound, animation and video - in any combination - to convey information and ideas through advertisements.

This being a highly dynamic industry, one great ad can catapult a professional to the AD hall of fame. If you are creative, possess verve and have learnt basic multimedia skills, the field of advertising is the one for you.

amitabh.sharma@gleanerjm.com