Sunday, 3rd December, 2006 was a special day for the Indian CG community as www.cgtantra.com celebrated its 2nd anniversary with an impressive �day long� event.
The event was attended by around 300 artists as well as some studio management and was a veritable feast of sessions and workshops including �Making of Cars�, �Comic Books�, �Mighty Pencil�, �Secrets of Effective VFX�, �Creature Design� etc. These sessions were conducted by key representatives from national and international studios including Kamal Mistry from Pixar, Suresh Seetharaman from Virgin Comics and Animation, Mike Seymour from FXPHD, Vinayak P from R&H, Shyam S from AniRights and Siju Thomas from CCX.
The event also included the CG Tantra honors where outstanding work from the members was showcased and honored.
Befitting the occasion was the wonderful venue �Whistling Woods� whose spanking new auditorium set the right ambience for the day�s proceedings.
Kick-starting the dayâ€?s events, AniRights” Kulkarni complimented the CG Tantra Administrators and founders Chand, Abhishek and Gokul. “Community and artists are extremely important for the progress of the industry. A clear indication of the maturity and evolvement of the Indian animation ecosystem lies in the fact that we have portals and dedicated media covering and linking the industry. I congratulate CG Tantra on completing two years and will continue to offer them all my support in the time to come”
Addressing the artist audience, guest of honor Rajiv Vaishnav of NASSCOM shared, “It is very heartening to see all of you gathered over here with so much enthusiasm on a Sunday morning. I am greatly inspired and congratulate CG Tantra on its 2nd anniversary.” Vaishnav also pledged his support on behalf of NASSCOM to the artist community.
Whistling Woods dean Kurt Inderbitzin shared his dreams and fondness for the subject of animation. “In my next life, I want to be an animator” Kurt shared emphatically. “And I don’t say this just because I am talking to an audience full of animators. The creative possibilities that one has as an animation film maker are limitless.”
Kurt also stressed to the audience that it was all about story telling and even as they focused on their CG and other process, it would do them good to give equal importance to their story telling skills.
Next up, the proud founders of Tantra showcased the new look logo and the revamped Tantra site with all new features.
“The Making of Cars” was probably amongst the most eagerly awaited sessions of the day. Pixar Technical director Kamal Mistry shared a comprehensive presentation highlighting story development, Art and production design, Layout and animation, Set and character modeling, Visual effects, Light and rendering and Final deliverables and was as thorough and detailed as could be.
Talking about how it was working with living legends such as John Lasseter and Brad Bird, Kamal shared a lot of anecdotes and recollected moments from Pixar with audience. (to read an account about Kamal�s session, Click Here.)
Virgin Comics Suresh Seetharaman pointed out how their company was using comic books as the nucleus of its multi platform entertainment IP creation strategy.
“Today comics have that visual grandeur, that cinematic narrative and it is the best way to test story ideas which can then evolved to other platforms. We are working with the best of talent in Hollywood as well as in India and are taking eastern content to the west.”
The mighty pencil, a session conducted by Kamal, Vinayak from R&H and Shyam from AniRights was successful in inspiring the audience and one can be very sure that quite a few artists must have gone back home and taken to their drawing boards
Talking about sketching and drawing, Vinayak, AniRights shared, “Animation is caricature of reality”, “In order to draw and caricature well, and one has to form the habit of observing things around.” (To read an account about the â€?Mighty Pencilâ€? session, Click Here.)
One of the most experienced 3D experts in the country Siju Thomas from CCX studio, Chennai conducted a creature designing workshop where he gave the audience his take on what it took to be a successful creature designer. “Observation skills and good knowledge of anatomy are a must to design creatures. It is also important to make yourself familiar with all the parts and familiarize yourself with their names as you can only draw what you are familiar with” he pointed out.
“In the case of coming up with complete imaginary characters, even then, the approach of modeling a skeleton system helps in better character articulation and makes life easier for the animators” he added.
Australia based Mike Seymour from VFXPhd. conducted a session �Secrets of Effective VFX where he outlined the VFX process sharing images and work in progress screen shots. Mike did share with the audience the impact that tools and stock like camera, lenses, film etc. had in the final output of the FX. (click here to read his interview)
Bringing the day�s events to a grand finale the CG TANTRA HONORS were conferred upon some of the best techno-creative artists and their work.
Modeling Session
Winner: Anish Mohan
Runner-up: D.Chung
Animation Session
Harmendra Singh for animation
Anand D
Best Contribution: Shyam Sriram
The final event for the day was the AnimationXpress.com lucky draw which was won by three lucky winners including Anish Mohan, Oscar Francis, Manpreet Sandhu.
A fun filled day with enriching sessions, inspirational talks and community gathering, the CG Tantra 2nd anniversary was a memorable occasion and we at AnimationXpress.com look forward for many more such community initiatives.