Chitrakatha 09 @ NID, Ahmedabad - CGTantra Editor Rishabh reports....

Chitrakatha 09 starts tomorrow in NID, Ahmedabad.. Rishabh Shrivastav, Editor, CGTANTRA will be giving you a daily dose of the activities around there on CGTantra Blogs, so stay connected ,

Chitrakatha 09 Blog

Cheers Chitrakatha 09!

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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