The perennial paradox with technology is that today‘s latest becomes obsolete in less than a year. The solution lies not in recklessly investing money in the latest technological products, but to imbibe an analytical and logical technology sensibility that takes into account several factors related to budget, deadline and quality benchmarks before taking any technology decision.

Sharing his experiences, Munjal explained, “When a studio starts, there are certain questions that it faces, like: How much? How soon? How fast? When? How? Then there are new software, new versions and re-training the artists. In order to answer these, I used the four hat approach which includes Creativity, Schedule, Budgets and Technology and finally to marry all of them."

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“The work should be started first focusing on the creativity, The creativity aspect, then the production should be looked into according to the schedule using the right technology, depending on all this, the budgets should be fixed. There is no point in doing a good film which has high budget but lacks good characters. You have to set your goals and set them right,” he pointed.

Citing one of the projects as an example, he shared, "When we began doing Genie for Star Plus for a show called Khulja Sim-Sim, we were given 30 seconds of animation to be produced in a week. It was appreciated by the audience to such an extent that the screen time for genie was increased to three minutes. It was good news for us business wise, but the production became a nightmare. It is in times of scaling up the output that one finds lot of things like loopholes in the system, how small inefficiencies can become serious bottlenecks and how to modify things in real time."

“During Genie, our major challenge was the facial expressions. As the character had lot of one on one interaction with the host, it was generally either close up shots or the mid shots. This made the facial expressions the main feature of the character. The render time per frame for this was 40 seconds to a minute which made the facial expressions a bottleneck for us. We had to find ways to manage time. And that’s when we come up with eXprez Edit, our proprietary facial expression system. It helped our animators become super efficient as we went from 12 people doing 30 seconds of animation a week to six people doing three minutes per week,” explained Munjal.

Talking about the growth period of a studio, Munjal shed light on the important factors during that phase. According to him, pipeline, functioning as departments, ability to handle multiple projects, project management and line producers are the points to be remembered.

He further elaborated, “There are no easy answers for how to deal with these factors as they have to be dealt one by one and in the right way because what remains with us is the pipeline as in how to set up a show, how easy is it to manage multiple projects and much more.”

He also spoke on how they learnt from working on Genie and how they used these lessons during J Bole Toh Jadoo which is a live action cum animation series.

“There were 30 characters, 8 to 18 minutes of animation and the challenges were that it was live action cum animation format, there had to be CG sets and hand held camera shots. When we pitched this idea to Nickelodeon they went for it and the show had to go on air in 45 days and we had to deliver one episode per week which meant 1,00,000 frames in five days across all machines. There were logistic issues about rendering these many shots in such short time span.

The solution came forth in terms of ‘Network Render Management Systems’. This software gave us the solution to handle a render farm of hundred machines. It also made possible for people not to worry about the rendering all the time and do other important works.”

Munjal concluded his session with, “Basically what I am trying to say is that we have seen how technology is making a difference while working on projects. How we need to make up our own solutions and software to get better and fast outputs. It is always good to be in control of your technology. In our case, I had a huge process of learning while our company was growing from 12 members to 75 and we will keep learning in future.”

Send your resumes to vfxcareers@redchillies.com or walk in (between 6 PM to 8 PM) to Deepvan Bldg, Anand Vihar Society, Khar Danda, Corner of 20th Road, Mumbai-52. Contact person Mr. Harry

UTV Toons is hiring at one of Indias largest state of the art CGI Studios. This year the studio is starting work on 3 animated features and is already in the midst of working on a few very high-profile TV series. The studio has already started gearing up for the features and is recruiting the best from both India and abroad.

The search is for 3D BG Artist, 3d Character Animator, Riggers, Texturing Artist, Lighting Artist, Compositor, Rendering Artist

• Should have a minimum 1-year of experience of working in an International project with a studio of repute or 2 years on a domestic project.
• Should have good communication skills.
  
• Good knowledge of Maya software
  
• Freshers do not apply

Come join us and elevate your portfolio to a completely new level.

Send us your resume today toonsjobs@utvnet.com

DQE- Our work over the years has spoken for itself. The passion and persistence of DQites for quality and timely deliveries has opened up more avenues for DQE in the International Animation Space.To cater to our bandwidth of increasing operations, we are looking clickhere to Read

TATA Elxsi - Visual Computing Labs

ANIMATORS / LIGHTERS / VFX Generalists keen on building a career with us, please walk in with your resume and showreel between 10 am to 4 pm

TATA Elxsi limited - Visual Computing Labs
Boston House, 2nd Floor, Suren Road,
Off. Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri (E), Mumbai- 400093
Tel: 022-26822142/43/44/45

Reach us at vclcareers@tataelxsi.co.in

Rewarding Careers with MNC salaries

Picasso Digital Media is recruiting 3D talent for its rapid expansion in Production & Education activities in the cities of Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Besides attractive remuneration package, you are assured of stimulating working environment and career progression.
Candidates selected for positions in education division will have the opportunity of being groomed by Canadian experts who worked for several Hollywood movies and eventually move to production division.
Candidates selected for production division will work on projects creating IP.
Modelling/Rigging/animation experts with 2-8 years experience with exposure to Maya platform may apply in confidence to hr@picasso.co.in or hr@picassostudios.in
Our Websites: www.picasso.co.in,
www.picassostudios.in

Digital Magic Visuals Studio, Chennai, an Animation Production, Post-Production and Training Company has following openings:

1. D.I. Colorist / Trainee:
Experience in Film / Video color correction tools (Lustre / Smoke / Nucoda / Telecine) with 2 years for DI Colorist, 1 Year for the Trainee
Click Here for More Details

Sunanimatics, a leading animation and entertainment company, with its prestigious project "GHATOTHKACH" is all set for release in 2007. We are looking for highly talented and enthusiastic artists to join us for its upcoming Hollywood standard 3D animated features "ESHAN- the legend of Bhairav" , "ROMEO'S RONNIE & JULLIETS JENNIE-A bard's tail" and movie based Gaming.
PRE-PRODUCTION - Character designers, Storyboard artists, Layout artists, Prop designers.
PRODUCTION - Modelers, Texture artists, Riggers, Animators and Lighting artists.
GAMING - Programmers, Designers and Testers.
Send your resumes to careers@sunanimatics.com

Candidate should have strong relationships with writers, directors, and actors within India and possibly abroad. Candidate should be entrepreneurial, creative, story oriented, and with discriminating taste. Click Here for more details