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.

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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.

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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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