Close on the heels of the three jam packed 'Making of Narnia' sessions that Rhythm & Hues India has held in the past two weeks, the studio has announced its plans to host regular monthly meetup sessions as part of its series 'CG Meetup @ R&H India'.

The meetups will be free of charge to all attendees and shall be conducted on the last weekend of every month, while the topics of discussion to be covered will be chosen by the artist community on a monthly basis.

Speaking to Animation 'xpress, R&H India Managing Director Prashant Buyyala said," R&H India would love to see the development of a collaborative CG community within the country. A community that openly shares information and knowledge to help the collective growth of our artists in India. We would also love to see the creation of a forum for networking within our community"

"We decided that the best way for us to contribute towards this ideal is to start some small activities that adhered to the spirit of our goals. We are working with other organizations such as ASIFA India, CG Tantra and Animation 'xpress that have similar goals and complement us very well" he added.

"Our hope is that these small events demonstrate to everyone the hunger and desire for knowledge that exists out there within our community and that other companies and organizations in India start hosting such gatherings too. This will truly create a win-win scenario for everyone" he further added.

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Bangalore Meetup
In a bid to not restrict the knowledge sharing and community building activities to Mumbai alone, R&H India will be hosting the "Narnia Behind The Scenes" meetup in Bangalore too.

The Bangalore meetup is slated for Sunday, February 19th at Shivarathreeswara Centre (JSS Auditorium) 8th Block in Jayanagar. The event will start at 2pm. Registration details and further information for the Bangalore event can be found at http://www.asifaindia.com

Prashant elaborated that,"We have received several requests from artists outside of Mumbai who are starving for such events. We had an opportunity to be in Bangalore for some work so therefore we decided to take advantage of the timing to host the same "Behind the Scenes" event in Bangalore too.

"The other reason for conducting this event in Bangalore is that we would like to give a bit more exposure regarding the technical challenges involved in the CG industry to the members of the IT industry. The Indian CG Industry has a severe shortage of computer science and engineering oriented employees and raising the awareness in this area is an important long term goal for the industry" he added.

Thirst for Knowledge: The Indian CG Community
Commenting further upon the eagerness and enthusiasm amongst the CG community to evolve and learn more, Prashant pointed out that "The overwhelming response to the event clearly demonstrated to us that there is a tremendous hunger and thirst for knowledge within our CG community. Artists are really looking for venues and forums to share their ideas and learn from each other. There is a significant amount of fear and insecurity regarding the raiding of employees within our Indian animation companies, so a lot of them have not encouraged such gatherings. Hopefully as the industry matures, this attitude can be transformed into a positive set of activities that collectively helps everyone in the industry"

Overwhelming Response

The response to the first meetup was significantly greater than what Rhythm & Hues India anticipated and they had to host the same event 3 times to accommodate the roughly 450 people that registered for the event.

Talking about the response Prashant shared, "We hosted the Narnia event as the first of our CG Meetup series. The event was structured to be relatively informal and highly interactive. Nothing fancy. The goal once again was to share as much information as possible, so the event started out with listing any questions that the audience members had and then we tried addressing the questions one at a time. Topics ranged from pre-production to modeling, rigging, animation, lighting, production pipelines, artificial intelligence, motion-capture vs. keyframe animation, etc.. etc.. It was truly a wonderful experience."

"After the discussion on Narnia, we had an "open mic" session where anyone from the audience could come up front to make any announcements or share any information that they wanted with the CG community. There were some good discussion from ASIFA India and CG Tantra about our community as well an impromptu screening of some work in progress animation clips by Vaibav Kumaresh" he added.

Next Mumbai Meetup
The next CG Meetup has been scheduled for Sunday February 26th at the R&H premises in Mumbai and is once again supported by ASIFA India, CGTantra, and Animation 'xpress.

The meetup will be a Modeling workshop and shall be conducted by Vivek Ram from R&H India, Carl Caste from Future Thought, Madhu Nair from UTV Toons and Dileep Varma from R&H India.

The discussion schedule for the CG Modeling meetup in Mumbai is as follows

-Types of Modeling: Types of methods used in the industry to generate a
3d model.

-Overview of Modeling WorkFlow in a Production Pipeline: A brief introduction to how a model develops from concept drawing to a fully finished character/Prop in a
production Environment.

-Technical Requirements in Modeling: We'll try and answer all those queries you've always had on edgeloops and good/bad topologies and what are good/bad modeling practises.

-Digital Sculpting : The Importance of an in depth study of form in Modeling. The importance of sketches and references.

-Organic Modeling : Case study on modeling specific body parts.

-Inorganic Modeling: Case study on modeling a vehicle.

-Modeling on technicalities: Modeling for fur and cloth.

-Demo reels: What Companies look for in a modeling reel

Registration for this workshop has already started. Reserve your seat by emailing cgmeetup@rhythm.com. Further information will always be available via http://www.animationxpress.com and at http://www.asifaindia.com