Sanjay took time out to give back to his Alma-mater. From the year 1998 to 2001, twice a year, Sanjay gave classes in basic animation and computer animation courses to the students of the Bachelors’ and Masters’ programs at NID.

In the year 2002, Sanjay joined NID as a full-time faculty to restructure, reorganize and upgrade NID’s animation course structures given the emergence of digital technology. Sanjay came up with a fresh program that saved time and money and used the technology to minimize drudgery in the areas of basic animation, computer animation, production process, postproduction, lip-synchronization, action analysis, character design etc.

Sanjay also conducted a Five day long workshops on New Media in Primary Education for teachers from across India introducing them to new media, computer software, interaction design and storytelling as effective tools for teaching.

A good number of people from the Swaminarayan sect reside in the UK. However, very little is known to the new generations about their religion. The Swaminarayan sect UK wanted to produce a thirteen-episode TV series, about the life and times of Swaminarayan, to fill this void.

With the help of the preachers of the Swaminarayan Sect in India, Sanjay went on to study the life and times of Swaminarayan and wrote thirteen stories. A group of six key animators, 18 cleanup and in-between artists trained and worked under Sanjay to finish the thirteen-episode of the 2D hand-drawn animated TV serial. Traditional hand-made drawing methods were used for the high resolution and quality of the drawings.

By this time, Sanjay had a well-oiled studio with about forty talented animators. As a result of which commercial television advertisement agencies begin to approach LightBox Animations. To quicken the turnover and to use emerging technologies optimally, Sanjay developed a pioneer style of merging 3D and 2D animations.

Based on the client’s brief, emphasizing the strength of the products, Sanjay created quick visual scripts for the advertisement. The 3D and 2D animators were simultaneously engaged in the production work. Frame-by-frame prints of the 3D motion were taken out, and 2D animation layers were drawn in alignment with the prints. The drawings were then scanned in and composited with the 3D animation.

BJ And the Gang was a one-episode pilot project proposed for a TV series to be shown on British Television. The ten-minute pilot, with four characters, multiple locations and multiple vehicles needed to be character designed and animated in ten days. Sanjay with one animator and one editor finished it in nine days. To be able to finish it on time an experimental approach was taken where backgrounds were printed on large sheets of paper, characters were drawn directly onto the computer with a mouse and objects and vehicles were created in Adobe Poser and 3D Max.

This interactive entertaining CDROM was produced to supply religious, cultural, and historical knowledge to the 2nd and 3rd generation persons of the Jain community residing in the west. Sanjay studied the Jain religion and culture with the help of religious leaders and available literature. Based on this, Sanjay came up with stories that weave the essence of Jainism. The interactive CDROM, and the games within, are woven around a boy’s interaction with his grandmother that sends him off on an adventure to quench his quest that teaches him and thus, the user, about this ancient religion.

As a result of the success of the interactive CDROM of Discover Jainism, it was decided that a separate 2D animation studio was needed with a dedicated team to take up bigger projects. ‘LightBox Animations’ was designed, constructed, and established, as a sister company to the Moving Pixels. Sanjay became the director of the company and went on to hire about forty talented artists. In the first half of the shift, he trained the team in drawing for animation, key animation, inbetweening, inking and coloring, character development, acting, basic animation, and storyboarding, while working on client projects in the second shift.
Of course, Sanjay designed the logo.

Sanjay moved to Ahmedabad to start a 2D digital animation unit in a media company. Growing out of an animator role, Sanjay for the first time took up the central role of a director doing everything from conceptualizing, researching, content development, information architecture, interactivity design, story development, infographics, character design, animation, to client servicing and managing the project.

The school-going, computer educated, second/third generation young Gujaratis in the western world were increasingly drifting away from their language and culture. This created a void and thus a business opportunity that needed to be filled and harvested.

This interactive, entertaining, game-based CDROM aimed to fill the void of linguistic knowledge amongst the second and third-generation Gujarati NRIs in Europe and America. Sanjay thoroughly studied the daily spoken Gujarati language and the Gujarati script with the help of local language experts and hired a primary school Gujrati teacher to learn the formation of words and pronunciation. Then, a course was structured into easily flowing chapters from English to Gujarati. The games were designed and placed to test the user at the end of every lesson.

With the growing number of second-generation Indians, the market for India-centric religious and cultural animated interactive CDROMs were growing in the European countries. India Festiva and India Mystica were re-introduced with upgraded animated versions to the audience. Sanjay’s style of drawing and animation were the key elements to upcycling these CDROMs.

Both digital interactive programs showcase the culture, festivals, and mystiques of ancient Indian civilization put in a contemporary context. Through a highly animated interactive experience, the users are taken through the stories and mystics of what adds up to be Indian civilization.

There will be never a plot that the epic Mahabharata hasn’t covered. The Mahabharata is a story worth being told. However, as people were getting accustomed to the digital screen, the probability of Mahabharata being read in book form was diminishing. Considering the complexity of the plots and events, an interactive and animated presentation would be a game changer. Magic Software decided to take this up.

The Mahabharata is an epic mythology, and creating an animated version of the text was an epic task at hand. Sanjay studied and researched many versions of the story to bring the story into a common and easy-to-understand narrative in English. After understanding different traditional painting styles, all the characters and backgrounds were hand-painted separately, scanned and animated on the computer. The CDROM was launched worldwide within a year.

Targeting the NRI market, interactive CDROMs were produced to teach basic spoken Hindi to people visiting India and to the second-generation Indian origin community. Through a story of second-generation Indians visiting India and coming across many situations that need them to use Hindi. The animations were drawn directly onto the computer with a mouse and were designed to run smoothly given the very limited capability of computers in those times.