n a fancy Parisian Cafe, an uptight businessman is about to pay the cheque when he finds out that he has lost his wallet. To save time he decides to order more coffee.
French Roast is a character driven short film about appearances. Without any dialouge, the story is told through character animation, music and sound.

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Blue is a fast paced action film, which has over 1200 shots that have passed through the vfx pipeline.
Commenting on the project, Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director, Prime Focus and VFX Supervisor on Blue, mentioned, "The visual splendour of the sea has never been captured before in any Indian film like it is in Blue. This is underpinned by a huge pipeline of VFX shots which were delivered by our team here at Prime Focus. We are proud to be associated with such an ambitious project and hope that the movie turns out to be a visual effects treat for the viewers."
Reupal Rawal, VFX supervisor on the project added, "It is a pleasure to have worked on a big budget visual effects wonder called Blue. Considering that the theme necessitated plenty of visual effects work, the director allowed us a great deal of latitude to showcase our creativity and skills to create some fabulous VFX shots. We are proud to be associated with projects such as Blue which we believe will raise the bar of visual effects in Bollywood."

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Moritz Mayerhofer talks about 'Urs'

Many years Urs looked after his aging mother. But now he sets out for a dangerous journey: He carries her up a mountain to find a better place for both of them. But his mother doesn't want to leave her home. . With appealing layouts, symbolic cinematic approach and beautiful matte paintings the film takes you with it. Let's go behind the scenes of the film.

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TASI Views Choice Awards 2009 (TVCA)

Yet another and a much awaited Anifest visits us. 3 days of jam packed sessions from speakers from all across India. With it also comes something that gives us the previlige to be a jury and select our favourate films, the TASI Viewer’s Choice Awards.

With each year the excitement and the reach of TVCA keeps growing. This year the response overwhelmed every one with more than 370 entries this year the pre selection jury had a hard time selecting the films for screening and the voting at Anifest India 2009. We are all excited to watch quality films from all across the globe and be the judge of the best, I cant wait.

We wanted to know more so we spoke to Vaibhav Kumaresh and Ranjit Singh who surprisingly could spare some time days before the fest and gives us thier comments.

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Rajat Ojha has around 14 years of experience in IT industry. Rajat started his career with a Top Down perspective game which he did in Pascal and released on BBS in early 1995 but because of lack of opportunity, he continued to work on software applications During this period, Rajat closely worked with various companies like Verisgn, Toshiba, Cosmi Corp etc and developed various system level application and games.

Rajat would be taking the session on Simulation at Anifest India 2009. We caught up with Rajat to tell us about Simulations in gaming, about the Gaming Industry and his session at Anifest India 2009.

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As the trend goes, stop motion has caught on in a big way with today’s young animators who are experimenting in movie making using the stop motion techniques. So The Animation Society of Kolkata organized a workshop on Stop Motion Animation - from concept to creation by Delwyn Jude Remedios at Gyan Manch on Monday the 7th of September 2009.

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Kaminey is a story about a pair of twins - Charlie and Guddu who can't stand the sight of each other. It's a dark comic ride as the brothers are sucked in a world of drugs, guns and money. In the Middle of the crazy adventure running and protecting themselves they realise that all they have is each other.
Kaminey is a treat with a unique style of story telling with brilliant visual treatment; it sets a new trend in Cinema.

We caught up with Govardhan Vigraham who was the VFX Designer/Supervisor for the film, highly reputed with over 17 years of Industry experience. He tells us what makes 'Kaminey' a trend setter and why one shouldnt miss it.

Click on the image to view the article and to discuss 'Kaminey'

Feature Artist : Santhosh Pai aka Sanpaiya

Santhosh Pai who is famously know as Sanpaiya on CG forums for whom a degree in Business Management was not enough to take him away from his love for art. He believes that when art inspires you, you never look at things around you the same way. Having studied art under eminent artist Ramesh Rao at Drishya school of Arts he weaved his way to being a well known and mature artist. His works today are appreciated at many platforms. Calling himself a perpetual student of art Santhosh can inspire anyone with the essence of his works and how the vivid colors speak a different perception of emotions expressed through mere simplicity of art. CGTantra caught up with Santhosh to know more and make him share his magic with us. READ MORE...

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Anifest India 2009 - A reason to Smile !

The countdown has begun. The Anifest India 2009 is back, You can breathe now may be not sneeze though. After reluctantly having to posponed the event the entire TASI team gives us a reason to smile again. Anifest 2009 shall be held from the 18th to the 20th September 2009. We just wanted to tell you more about the exciting sessions throughout the 3 days and talk to the team about the festival.

The Entire TASI team is on their toes to get you the best at Anifest 2009. With great effort and my great detective skills I caught hold of few members of the TASI core team to talk to us. Here is what they had to say.

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‘Do Paise Ki Dhoop Chaar Aane Ki Barish’ (‘Two pennies for sunshine and four cents for rain’), the directorial debut of the famous Indian actress-turned-filmmaker Deepti Naval, premiered at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival this year to a very warm reception. The film, which was also written and produced by Naval on a very tight budget, is, on the surface, the story of a struggling gay lyricist, an ageing prostitute and her physically challenged 12 year old son. But “it isn’t simply a film about gays and prostitutes. It is more essentially about the ebbs and tides of human relationships,” said Naval in an interview. “The idea was to present a modern, sensitive and realistic portrait of people struggling to find happiness.”

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Nate Wragg from Pixar visits India

Anifest India 2009 is just few blocks away. With an interesting line up of sessions we also have a session on Art Direction & Pre-production by Nathan Wragg from Pixar. A master illustrator who can see the funny side of eventually any story is all packed up and excited to be sharing his bit with India. CGTantra caught up with him to know more about him and his works.

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Prime Focus brings Hollywood VFX veteran to India

Mumbai, August 5th, 2009 - Michael Fink, Hollywood Visual Effects veteran and Academy Award winner has directed his first Indian TV commercial for Lotte Coffy Bite. Fink is President, VFX Worldwide at Prime Focus, India's leading Visual Entertainment Services Company. The Mumbai based company was appointed by Rediffusion Y&R and MAD Entertainment for the toffee brand's latest TV commercial.

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A much awaited CG Meetup by ASIFA began with Amit Aidasani from ASIFA giving an introduction and talking about various successful CG Meetups and introducing Bill Kroyer to the audience. With an extensive experience Bill has worked from being a story board artist, writer, director to animation supervisor with movies like Garfield, Scooby-Doo, Cats & Dogs, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, TRON and many more.

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Making of 'Qiane - Goddess of Illusions' by Shreya Shetty

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Qiane is a character from a story I am developing so I had a pretty strong idea of how I wanted her to be presented. The story is based in an alternate dimension, a world that shifts in and out of the universe as we know it. Qiane is the Goddess of Illusions, the queen of Eithanas (as the world is called) and the personification of the false realm itself. Shifting between the living world and the afterlife, those who get into Eithanas may not get out, unless the Goddess wills them so. READ MORE

Making of 'The Cow Girl' - Samar Vijay

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I started the cowgirl with a simple base mesh (provided by Marshu Mishu AKA FX81) did some minor mesh changes on it to reduce pinches is some areas.

When I was done with that I took the base mesh to zbrush and started sculpting the female body. Once I was done with a decent sculpt which I thought was ready to pose, using zbrush transpose tools I posed the body and gave some final touches to the sculpt acc. to the pose. I mainly focused on the curves of her body to make her look hot and sexy.
These are the shots of the workflow. READ MORE

The cursed pirate was a project that required a lot of back and forth in ideas and modeling. It started of with a doodle / Thumbnail sketch (lots of them) on paper to the final render in Maya. Sometimes I got lost in the look of the character but my friends and teachers were very helpful in giving me feedback, that really kept me focused and on track as to how the final look would be. A lot of time and effort was spent mainly in the idea and concept creation. The cursed Pirate is a part of a scene (Death of a Spell) where two characters are present, but for the purpose of this “Making of”

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Los Angeles, CA, June 30, 2009 - StudioGPU announced today the immediate availability of MachStudio Pro™, a professional 3D workflow and rendering package created by artists for artists. MachStudio Pro offers a seamless way to create and interact with cinematic quality 3D objects and environments in a non-linear workspace by leveraging the horsepower of off-the-shelf professional graphics processing units (GPUs) to deliver real-time and near real-time workflow performance on a desktop workstation.

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Interview with CGTantrik - Shreya Shetty

Shreya Shetty, A BFA from J.J School of Fine Arts brushed up her creativity while wanting to be a Veterinary Surgeon. After a years break which she calls the most constructive she knew she wanted to be an artist. Later trying her hand on digital painting she matured as an artist and now creates master pieces. CGTantra is proud to have her as a Forum leader. We caught up with her to know more about her techniques and work procedures

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Mumbai based VFX house FutureWorks, has produced seamless VFX work for a Malayalam movie titled 'Bhramaram'. The studio has worked on the entire post production of this suspense story written and directed by renowned filmmaker Blessy which mainly includes DI and VFX.

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‘Mi Shivaji Raje Bhosale Boltoy!’ is surely one of the most powerful films to have come out of Marathi cinema.
The visual effects of the film required a lot of Rotoscopy, from horses to armoured men, it was a very challenging job since while the scenes were being shot the light conditions kept changing hence the shadows kept changing. The lighting had to be worked on and the shadows were added later. A lot of crowd multiplication was done to show the hugeness of the army of Afzal Khan who stand out to challenge Shivaji Maharaj.

Click on image to watch the making and the Video Interview

This whirlpool television commercial is one of the most challenging projects that we have worked on in recent times. The brief that Prime Focus received from the advertising agency was that Whirlpool water purifier makes water so pure that it brings smile to the face of even an unborn baby.
The biggest challenge for us was to create the womb holding a baby, as the task was to make it as realistic as possible using computer graphics. The agency wanted a good-looking baby that smiles. So like every other project we started off by doing extensive research on the texture, look and feel. But the time provided was very less and so we to save time we created a dummy model and started playing around with various camera moves to fit into an edit on the basis of the storyboard received.

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Interview with Samar Vijay - CGTantra Feature Artist

Samar Vijay, a Freelance Character Artist lets his work do the talking for him. He specializes in game models. Some one who just one fine day decided venture into the 3D industry and never looked back, with an eye for detail he worked 18 hours a day to polish his skill as a modeler and now amazes us with his work.

He believes that you cannot survive without knowledge of Anatomy and form. CGTantra caught up with Samar to tell us more about his works and what gives so much substance to his characters

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CGTEXPO 09 Mumbai - A Review

CGTEXPO 09 Mumbai, the largest Expo on Animation, Visual Effects and Gaming started with a bang with the registration desk bombarded with attendees at 09:30am on the first day of the event. Once you are in there was loads in store. With a line up of interesting sessions at the Main Stage, there was the Artist zone, Meet the artist, Master Classes, Education fair, Technology fair, the Art gallery, Job fair etc.

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CGTantra Community Awards Winners

Interview with Adam Thomas - VFX - The Hunt for Gollum

CGTEXPO 09 MUMBAI Slide Show DAY 01

CGTEXPO 09 MUMBAI Slide Show DAY 02

CGTEXPO 09 Mumbai Master Classes DAY 01

CGTEXPO 09 Mumbai Master Classes Day 02

CGTEXPO 09 DELHI Slide Show DAY 01

CGTEXPO 09 DELHI Slide Show DAY 02

Tell us about your experience at CGTEXPO 09 MUMBAI

The Golden Cursor Animation Awards

Golden Cursor awards saw a turnout of over 300 students and professionals. The day saw many big names of the Animation Industry under one roof. The special guests for the evening were Ian Livingstone, Co-founder of Games Workshop and Anthony Christov, Art Director. Golden Cursor Awards 2009 was presented by Cell18 and Arena Animation in association with Aptech and CNBC-TV 18 and powered by AnimationXpress.com

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SRIJAN 2009, the country’s only multi-city animation fair, kicked off its Mumbai edition with an inspiring display of 3D Animation and Visual Effects by animation students and major studios. The two-day event, being held at Nehru Center, Worli, was inaugurated by veteran film maker Ketan Mehta. SRIJAN was attended by reputed professionals and prominent personalities from the world of animation, media and Bollywood.

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Treassureboxx’09 got an overwhelming response with a huge audience, majority of them being VFX aspirants. The event started with Mr. Prabhanjan Chappar from Frameboxx giving an insight into the animation industry & how frameboxx forms a part of it. He also spoke about the Incubation Centre started by Frameboxx to give their students an industry experience before they enter the mainstream.

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CGTantrik Interview - Harshvardhan Kadam

A Master of Design in Visual Communication,from IDC, IIT Mumbai Harshvardhan Kadam is a free lance concept artist and illustrator. A true artist Harsh has has many acredited works winning at many Art and illustration competitions, With many of his works being displayed at Kala Ghoda Film festival he is also the CGTantra showcase award winner. An Artist with an attitude, he believes esthetics hold him strong. We caught up with him for an Interview.

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Interview with Adam Thomas - VFX - The Hunt for Gollum

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Sagar Cement Commercial - Vaibhav Studios

Sagar Cement! Solid cement ante solid veelu! (Solid cement means solid home) sang Vaibhav Kumaresh from Vaibhav studios when CGTantra caught up with him to tell us more about his work in the 3D animated commercial done for Sagar Cement. A telgu song was provided which was sculpted into an item number with workers dancing on telgu tunes.

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8x10 Tasveer - VFX by Future Works

8 X 10 Tasveer is a Bollywood film thriller released April 3, 2009, and starring Akshay Kumar and Ayesha Takia. It is directed by Nagesh Kukunour, and produced by Percept Picture Company. The story of the film 8 by 10 Tasvir revolves around a man who has super natural mental power and he can predict the past and future of any person just by gazing at his photograph played by Akshay Kumar.
Part VFX of the film was carried out by Future Works. Heart beat stopping climax of the film is shot under water with Akshay all tied up with chains, though the scene was shot in an artificial facility it had to look like it is the sea. This involved a lot of colour correction and integration of 3D objects like sea weed and other aquatic plants.

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E Suresh talks about the Commercial for Sulekha.com

E Suresh (Suresh Kumar Eriyat) has a portfolio that covers genres ranging from TV commercials, short films, music videos. and most recently long format films. E Suresh , a trained Carnatic musician, adventurer founded India's premier Animation Studio, Famous House of Animation - a division of Famous Studios. His award winning works include The Freedon Song (short film), MTV Poga (MTV Channel Promo), Sulekha.com commercial, Aala re Aala and many more.

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Stings and Smiles - First Hat-Trick workshop for 2009 by TASK

The first HAT-Trick workshop for 2009 was organised by us at International Club on Saturday, 11th April 2009 and the conductor was none other than the celebrated illustrator, cartoonist, scriptwriter, film maker and painter Mr. Sarbajit Sen who can best be described by his own soliloquy:

“A gnawing fear of mathematics haunted me throughout my shy and mostly silent childhood. I found relief in the blank walls and floors in our small suburban house --- a chalk or charcoal in hand – doodling and drawing weird rodents and human beings on them.”

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Animation Production Management by Ranjit Singh (Tony)

Tony Singh (Hon. Secretary-TASI) started the session on Production Management with a background on himself, giving a gist of the kind of projects that he has worked on before, he refused to be addressed as the King of Production Management, rather someone who been through various systems over many projects to know what might work and what might not.

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Making of 'The Alien Civilization' - by Eric J. Dima-ala (Winner of DMP Challenge)

Hi guys! First up, thanks for taking time to read this short tutorial on how I created my image: Children of Fire. The process I create may not be perfect but somehow, since I approach the art form systematically I can create my images faster and with less trial and error. I do hope that when you’re done reading this, you will have a basic idea on how I do things. Okay let’s begin then!

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The 1st Annual Frameflixx Awards

History was in the making at Bhaidas hall, Vile Parle, on the 3rd April as the first Frameflixx awards kick started with an audience of more than 900 students coming from all over the country. Mohan Kapoor was the host of the show, filled with enthusiasm for being a part of this day. Frameflixx promised to get out the Gen next of techno artists.

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Making of the Alien Civilization by Tyler Durden

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Rajshekha Bhatt talks about AMD ATI

Rajshekhar Bhatt is the sales manager for AMD’s ATI product line.

Based in Mumbai, Rajshekhar, 37, heads the sales team and is responsible for maintaining ATI’s leadership position in the PC graphics segment by nurturing strong relationships with ATI’s board partners and their channel partners.

We caught up with Rajshekhar to give us insights about AMD ATI and the role that it plays in the industry.

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India has a Gaming mindset which is waiting to explode. With the fact that 54% of the Indian population is below the age group of 25yrs and having the world’s largest youth population - India’s only getting younger. Entertainment features as one of the predominant spending area amongst the Indian consumers

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The Art of Claymation - Workshop by TASI

TASI was having a hard time restricting the Clay modeling workshop to a 100 attendees only owing to the overwhelming response. But that had to be expected when every ones favorite Simpu Singh or Vaibhav Kumaresh is taking a session.

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VFX by Red Chillies - A story in Pictures

Billu is a story of a simple ordinary barber from a village whose childhood friend becomes a superstar. A simple story of friendship told in a rather interesting manner and trimmed to perfection through VFX by Red Chilies. From Choma shots to crowd multipication, a variety of work was required for the movie. Most of the film has been shot in the village and hence to show massive crowds crowd multiplication was used. Sharukh Khan is a superstar hence he is supposed to have acted in various Sci-Fi films for which Red Chillies had to create BGs, 3d objects to make it believeable. We spoke to Arjun Mitra, Creative Head, redchillies.VFX, here is was he had to share with CGTantra about the work in Billu.

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TASK hosts Kol.Katha ’09 - a Grand Success

The First Ever Animation Film Competition in Eastern India

Kolkata 26th February 09: The Animation Society of Kolkata (TASK) showcased the first ever animation short film festival in Kolkata, aptly named “Kol.Katha” which could be interpreted as a competition about story telling or about the tales from grandma’s lap, as the audience wishes to perceive it. This gift from TASK to the City of Joy, Art, Culture and Creativity was long overdue and was warmly received in the true Kolkata spirit by the audience. The early morning fog delayed our guests from Mumbai but that did not lessen the excitement and the enthusiasm in the 800 strong crowd that gathered at Kala Mandir to witness history being created.

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Making of The Lost World matte painting – Somnath Patra – CGTantra Challenge Winner

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Asifa - CG Meetup 03

ASIFA celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the ASIFA meet up with interesting sessions promising the audience a entertaining and informative day. A packed Auditorium at National College Bandra on the 14th Of February, the meet started with selected 2008 IAD films that had been brilliantly done with trailers of movies like Bolt, Madagaskar Escape to Africa, World of War Craft - Wrath of the Lich Link, Bio Shock 2- Sea of dreams.

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Renderman training by Lee Danskin in association with Maximus and Escape studios

In association with Escape Studios Lee Danskin conducted Renderman training at Maximus which was founded on the philosophy that full-time dedicated animation and visual effects training produces, Maximus has the Asia’s first Pixar certified tutor and it holds the largest number of Autodesk certified instructors in India with maximum technical guidance & library facility. Hence an obvious choice for the training.

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Call of Duty: World at War

Throughout the history of mankind, amidst the evolution weapons and diplomacies, the rudiments of ‘War’ has never changed – it always been about anarchy, apprehension and supremacy and also the devastating adrenaline which gushes through every vein in one’s body. The Call of Duty series, by far, has come the closest to capture this scenario on the virtual platform, all thanks to its regular redefinition in terms of passion for first-person shooters. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare brought a remarkable and speckled single-player experience that was compared with a superior multiplayer pack. But, World at War has brought back to the series' World War II roots.

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The Horror of Raaz The Mystery continues by Prime Focus

Always taking things to another level is what Prime Focus strives to do. Visualizing and furnishing all genres' of films Prime Focus has done it again venturing in to the dark and horror with their heavy duty and splendid work in Raaz - The Mystery Continues. Merzin Tavaria tells us more about it.

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Making of The Lost World matte painting – Pavel Cucka – CGTantra Challenge Winner

Pavel Cucka, Winner of the CGTantra Matte Painting Challenge tells his how the splendid Matte painting was created.

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Making of The Lost World Matte painting – Alex Soroka – CGTantra Challenge Winner

Alex Soroka talks about his prize winning work which he calls 'Hope'.

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Grand Theft Auto IV by Rock Star Games

Grand Theft Auto IV by Rock Star Games
The GTA franchise has been running and captivating gaming audiences since its first ever release in 1997. With grand success of their titles – Vice City, San Andreas – Rockstar has come up an all new version of the game, a step forward for this series. Liberty City is a vibrant fiction of Niko Bellic, an immigrant with convictions prevailing enough to propel him through the scattered and crumbling substructures of Liberty City's world of organized crime. The focus is on realism, a more established receptivity, and blending GTA into the present day.
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