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.

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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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