Car­ol Boon

At first glance, she ap­peared to be much younger than her 32 years yet when she spoke, it was with a sense of ma­tu­ri­ty and pro­found in­sight earned from a few short years work­ing un­der the high de­mands of the in­ter­na­tion­al film and an­i­ma­tion in­dus­tries. The more she re­vealed about her ex­pe­ri­ences, the more it be­came ap­par­ent that this young woman, like so many of us, was search­ing to strike that fine bal­ance be­tween be­ing con­sumed by her dream ca­reer and find­ing a deep­er mean­ing in life.

As a young sec­ondary school stu­dent, raised in a so­ci­ety that of­ten scoffs at art as a ca­reer choice, Shilpa Kir­palani felt an in­ner void when she was dis­suad­ed from pur­su­ing her flair for art in favour of more main­stream busi­ness and sci­ence sub­jects. Feel­ing some­what un­ful­filled up­on en­ter­ing Flori­da's Stet­son Uni­ver­si­ty to pur­sue a Com­put­er Sci­ence de­gree, it wasn't long be­fore her cre­ative juices bub­bled back up to the sur­face and she quick­ly switched her ma­jor to Dig­i­tal Art.

Like many as­pir­ing lo­cal artists who have ven­tured in­to the world of art ren­dered in 'Dig­i­tal Cy­ber­space', Shilpa's road ahead was to be one of twists and turns, ups and downs, stops and starts. Re­turn­ing to Trinidad in 2003 af­ter earn­ing her un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree, she was hired as Se­nior Ed­i­tor at Gayelle-The Chan­nel but soon re­alised that our fledg­ling lo­cal vi­su­al arts pro­duc­tion sec­tor was still light years away from its in­ter­na­tion­al in­dus­try coun­ter­parts. For­tu­nate­ly, her fam­i­ly's ini­tial reser­va­tions about her un­tra­di­tion­al ca­reer choice changed to en­cour­age­ment, when af­ter nine short months of work­ing here, Shilpa felt in­creas­ing­ly un­chal­lenged and un­ful­filled.

"I was re­al­ly thank­ful that my par­ents stood by me and urged me to re­turn to grad school to pur­sue my Mas­ters de­gree," Shilpa ex­plained. "Af­ter grad­u­at­ing, when I got hired by Sony Pic­tures Im­age­works they were thrilled for me. Lat­er, when I was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work for George Lu­cas' In­dus­tri­al Light and Mag­ic (ILM) in Sin­ga­pore, they pushed me to go even though I was ter­ri­fied of mov­ing half way around the globe. My mom and dad, sis­ters and broth­er and friends have been my rock and I gen­uine­ly want to thank them for their sup­port."

In­deed, mak­ing af­ter earn­ing her M.F.A in Vi­su­al Ef­fects from Geor­gia's Sa­van­nah Col­lege of Art and De­sign in 2007, Shilpa was to em­bark on an ad­ven­tur­ous ex­pe­di­tion in­to the ex­hil­a­rat­ing yet ex­haust­ing world of an­i­mat­ed fea­ture film mak­ing. That jour­ney would take her first to Cal­i­for­nia and then 11,000 miles away to Sin­ga­pore when ILM of­fered Shilpa a JuMP (Je­di Mas­ters Pro­gram) in­tern­ship, which al­lowed her to ex­plore the vast uni­verse of dig­i­tal art spe­cial­i­sa­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties. Her in­puts on Lu­cas films such as "Trans­form­ers:

Re­venge of the Fall­en", "Mis­sion Im­pos­si­ble 4" and "Bat­tle­ship" in­tro­duced her to ar­eas such as com­posit­ing, look de­vel­op­ment and match mov­ing, then she even­tu­al­ly chose to spe­cial­ize in dig­i­tal light­ing. Proud to be list­ed as Light­ing Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor on the cred­its of the an­i­mat­ed fea­ture film, "Ran­go," Shilpa ad­mit­ted that few here in Trinidad tru­ly un­der­stand what she does. "Every­one here calls me an an­i­ma­tor, which I'm not re­al­ly. I'm a Light­ing Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor/Dig­i­tal Artist," she point­ed out. "I'm not a lighter in the phys­i­cal sense. I'm a lighter in the elec­tron­ic sense... in the 3D space. Al­though light­ing scared me, I went for it be­cause it chal­lenged me the most. There's a side of me that thrives on chal­lenges in spite of the stress that comes with them."

The ex­haust­ing hours and high de­mands that are part and par­cel of work­ing in the mo­tion film in­dus­try were rea­son enough for Shilpa to search for an av­enue for find­ing a sense of calm, which she found in yo­ga. "Yo­ga of­fered me a way to find a bal­ance be­tween my work and my life. In the in­dus­try I'm in, you are ex­pect­ed to live to work, not work to live. Yo­ga has taught me how to breathe de­spite how chaot­ic every­thing can be in the world around me and in my head," she ex­plained.

The new­ly dis­cov­ered sense of self in­spired Shilpa to take a Yo­ga Teacher train­ing course af­ter mov­ing to a much-de­sired mid-lev­el po­si­tion as a Light­ing tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor with The Mov­ing Pic­ture Com­pa­ny in Lon­don. Un­for­tu­nate­ly how­ev­er, she was re­trenched with­in months due to bud­get cut­backs. Pe­ri­ods of un­em­ploy­ment, she re­al­izes, are the un­for­tu­nate re­al­i­ty for many like her work­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al mo­tion film in­dus­try and while she would love to work here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, she ad­mits it would be chal­leng­ing to find full time em­ploy­ment in her spe­cial­i­sa­tion.

Now back at home and hav­ing very re­cent­ly been af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share her ex­pe­ri­ences as a mem­ber of a re­gion­al dig­i­tal art and an­i­ma­tion in­dus­try pan­el dis­cus­sion at this year's An­i­mae Caribe Fes­ti­val, Shilpa of­fered these words of ad­vice: "Artists of this coun­try, both present and fu­ture, have the abil­i­ty to pro­duce an­i­ma­tion and vi­su­al ef­fects of a much high­er cal­i­bre. Our Gov­ern­ment needs to be more fo­cused on the cre­ativ­i­ty that can be cul­ti­vat­ed by open­ing av­enues in­to which our na­tion's peo­ple can pour their hearts. We have the abil­i­ty to cre­ate unique ma­te­r­i­al for our mar­ket based on our di­ver­si­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty." She went on to add, "In­vestors here al­so need to un­der­stand the fun­da­men­tal na­ture of the graph­ic arts in­dus­try. As artists, we don't do what we do for the mon­ey. We do it be­cause we love it! It can be a vi­able in­vest­ment, cul­tur­al­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly. If the prop­er time is not grant­ed and the di­rec­tion isn't clear, we risk so many beau­ti­ful sto­ries re­main­ing un­told."

For her part, Shilpa hopes one day to be able to pur­sue her life­long dream of teach­ing what she has learnt to oth­ers who al­so seek a fu­ture in art. "For now, though, I'd pre­fer to get more ex­pe­ri­ence un­der my belt so that I can teach my stu­dents and pre­pare them for what­ev­er area of the in­dus­try they want to en­ter. Dur­ing my Teach­ing In­tern­ship at the Sa­van­nah Col­lege of Art and De­sign, I got so much ful­fill­ment I got out of see­ing my stu­dents ex­cit­ed about their work, and about learn­ing, de­vel­op­ing and see­ing their per­son­al progress. That was just so amaz­ing to me."

Her strong de­sire to help is un­usu­al for some­one her age, but Shilpa Kir­palani isn't the typ­i­cal ca­reer dri­ven pro­fes­sion­al de­spite the fi­nan­cial re­wards of a like­ly suc­cess­ful fu­ture in the high pro­file area of dig­i­tal an­i­mat­ed film mak­ing. In­stead her de­sire to share her knowl­edge, skills and ex­pe­ri­ence with oth­ers, and to help so­ci­ety's less for­tu­nate as she did when her sec­ond trip to Cam­bo­dia was to work with a Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty team, re­veals a per­son whose depth of char­ac­ter and con­cern for oth­ers has taught her the art of gen­uine con­cern and car­ing. She is a promis­ing dig­i­tal artist and light­ing spe­cial­ist with the ca­pac­i­ty to shed her own spe­cial light on our world.