Monday 21 January 2008

2nd Anniversary of Asifa India CGMeetup


The long snaky queue outside K.C. College was evidence of Asifa's regular CG Meetups. The fact that it was the 2nd Anniversary was the icing on the cake. The counter at the entrance handed out feedback forms, raffle tickets and IAD 2006 flyers? Recycling surplus might be a more eco-friendly solution though. The slideshow on the projector displayed pictures of past IAD melas evoking nostalgia and keeping the crowd entertained. The crowds pored in and Blob Dylan decided to give an impromptu rendition. His performance was cut short however by a case of laryngitis.

The show must go on however and was kickstarted by a presentation on Asifa (The Association International du Film d' Animation) which has been around for half a century. The indian chapter having been active for almost a decade aspires to the same ideals and goals as the international organization. A short brief on the history of the annual International Animation Day mela and the CG-Meetup followed.

NewsFlash! Pixion and Tata Elxsi's Visual Computing Labs drop out of schedule at the last minute throwing the spotlight on Prime Focus. Merzin took the stage and spoke proudly of his company expanding from a single location to six locations in Mumbai, one each in Hyderabad and Chennai apart from their international locations in London and LA. He then proceeded to showcase Prime Focus' showreel followed by an exacting showcase of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Saawariyan'. From concept sketches to matte painting (painting textures from real-life onto 3D/CG models) Merzin took the viewers through the entire process. The process of matte painting was touted as invaluable in combining CG sets with live sets thereby adding depth and providing a realistic yet magical look n feel. The on-set green-screen shots enabled the VFX artists to match CG environments with the real sets. As one student enquired astutely as to why real sets were used at all since it was actually more challenging to match virtual sets. Merzin was quick to note that this was the very question posed to him by Sanjay Leela Bhansali towards the end of the production.

International Projects such as 'Tales on the River Bank' and '28 Weeks' were up next on the screen along with a sneak preview of 'Agent Crush'. Prime Focus created CG miltary vehicles and simulated explosion sequences for the feature '28 weeks'. Matte painting was used to make London virtually empty in many of the scenes in the movie as the story required the city to be evacuated. Next up was the very innovative 'Tales of the River Bank' a remake of an old television series. This feature combined real puppetry with virtual sets created in CG. Scenes included sky replacements, CG smoke and particles as well as realflow liquid simulation. CG environments provided the backdrop for puppets and miniature models in the film. One highly impressed student requested an encore and the showreel projected yet another time the miracles VFX can produce.

Rhythm & Hues came on with the case study of the recently released 'The Golden Compass'. First up was a short presentation on the features R&H worked on in 2007. These included Evan Almighty, The Kingdom, the just released Alvin & The Chipmunks and of course the case in study 'The Golden Compass'. The unique creatures known as daemons were all designed and created by R&H from look development to lighting and texturing. These daemons are the soul apparent of every human character in the film and share the same eye structure/colour and some of them are capable of morphing into other avatars.

Prasad discussed the production partnership that exists between the R&H studios in LA and Mumbai. 'The Golden Compass' required 500 artists working in tandem between Los Angeles and Mumbai. Visual FX supervisors Raymond Chen and Bill Westenhofer guided the project from concept to completion. Prasad further outlined the early R&D process to the advanced pipeline stages. Over 150 employees of R&H India were actively involved in this project. Everything from pipeline programming to rendering tech is done in-house by R&H. The R&H India team went on to emphasise their 100% integration with the Los Angeles studio. The innovative Education Department at Rhythm and Hues which consists of supervisors, leads and mentors has succesfully trained freshers coming out their apprentice program to directly work on these world-class VFX projects. In fact 50% of the R&H India team that worked on 'The Golden Compass' were freshers.

Henry David Thoreau echoed this sentiment of extraordinary accomplishment in his immortal words:
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

Friday 18 January 2008

Dread Locked!

Its a warm fuzzy afternoon. I'm chatting with a dear friend and prepearing lunch at the same time. Yes I realize multi-tasking is best left to womne. No time for debates now. I gotta get me some garlic from the lady with the cart down the alley. Prepare for takeoff! Boxers on? Check! T-shirt? Check! Cellphone? Check! Blast Off! In a flash of a second our hero is outta the door like a stone from a sling. Slam! he's outta the door and in orbit when uh..oh.. "Houston we have a problem. Im not carrying my re-entry pack!!!"

I'm locked out and my keys are inside the house. Brilliant eh? Well our hero doesn't panic. he calmly walks around the house, peers through the window and hey! there they are. Right where I left them: on the refridgerator. A mere 16 feet away. This is a mission for ground crew.

As I walk towards the security hut, one of them runs away to have lunch. Another bumbling idiot followed me half-heartedly as we found two narrow 2x4's and went about tying them up to create one long elongated arm. Version One turned out to be flawed partly due to gravity of course. Bumbling idiot walks away mumbling something about a siesta. Along comes the third of the ground crew; a glimmer of hope or a radioactive spark?

This one is a wisened young turk who accosts me to the corner of the universe where lies the verstaile bamboo stick. I pick one up and another and some rope to tie together. We return to our home planet, hover in orbit on the dark side and contemplate our course of action. The stick are knotted together and are aimed at the re-entry panel on the inside of the door. Now run! I yell at ground crew to spin over to the other side of the door and haul the handle below 'C' level while I jab at the panel through the window using Version Two of the elongated arm. And Voila!!! we are back in orbit!

Whew! Another day in the life of Spaced-Out Man!

Sunday 13 January 2008

The Great Divide

In no other industry is the divide more apparent or obvious yet so closely linked and interdependant. What am I talking about? Why quite simply the gap between the technical and the creative; the technologist and the artist.

I recently attended a forum on animation and interactive technology. The discussions ranged from topics like pipeline & production design to network and storage implementations. The sessions threw light on high-performance computing, rendering, file systems, low-cost hybrid solutions. A glimpse of future trends was showcased in the form of an industry and technology road map. Examples of how technology was being innovatively used in the country were highlighted.

The subtle undercurrents spoke of how creative artists are stubborn and inflexible when it comes to following pipeline processes and conventions citing their need to be abstract and imaginative. The general attitude that the creative artist; a glorified icon of the animation industry is largely responsible for the growth of the industry isn’t helping any. Ask any bright eyed student of the opportunities he sees in the animation industry today and chances are you will not hear any technical job profiles. The artist maintains that the idea is paramount and his creative vision needs the freedom to be abstract and obscure.

I maintain that creativity in education should be treated with the same status as literacy. However I would define creativity as having original ideas that add value. So when technologists are grappling with a pipeline bottleneck or inefficient networks to innovatively improve production they are in fact being creative. Writing scripts that simplify and streamline creative processes is a technical process yet is entirely guided by an artistic vision. Creativity is problem solving at the core. Innovation, design, communications, invention, all disciplines depend on both the technologist and artist mindsets working in concert to solve the problem. Technologists and artists need each other. Projects grow exactly because of the combination of the two. They work in different ways and with different methods but ultimately they complement each other. Ideas need implementation to accomplish anything real.

We need to remind ourselves of this because so much of our schooling, training, research and career movement is one-sided, naturally and unnaturally following a specializing/narrowing path. Lifting our heads to look around from time to time can be very refreshing and valuable. Innovation comes from bridging languages, disciplines and cultures.

Many people are technologists and artists at the same time. It's not always an either-or thing. I question the need to divide people into these binary categories. Sure some people tend to be one or the other, but others try to carve out a niche in which they can be both at the same time. Part of the creative process is to think both ways simultaneously - to alternate frequently, minute to minute. Making this separation implies that professionals should choose one or the other as a career path. Perhaps we should simply be conscious of the fact that most of our colleagues tend one way or the other, but we should try to develop both strengths together and avoid going only one way or the other.

Let us pay homage to the man of "both" worlds. Leonardo da Vinci. He found a plane of thought that encompassed both the world of art along with the world of the sciences. Leonardo was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, and scientist. He is most likely the epitome of the Renaissance man who dared to bridge the great divide.