“Every move that I have taken in my career has been guided by my inherent desire to be at the cutting edge of things, to be at the forefront of what’s happening”
“Umesh Shukla” One of the big Indian names in Global Animation & VFX was in India recently.
The man whose career is studded with several firsts has always been an explorer and pioneer in the field of computer graphics.
In an exclusive interview to Animation Xpress Managing Editor Anand Gurnani, Umesh Shukla shared his vision as well as some inspiring episodes from his journey in Animation & Visual Effects
Excerpts…
What has been your driving philosophy as one of the leading Indian names in Computer Graphics and Visual Effects globally?
I have always been fascinated by Story Telling, Graphics and effective use of technology. Every move that I have taken in my career has been guided by my inherent desire to be at the cutting edge of things, to be at the forefront of what’s happening.
Right from being a student at NID to being a VFX supervisor on Titanic, to working at Disney, to consulting Dreamworks on setting up CG Pipelines, the same philosophy has been behind every milestone in my career.
Even my most recent venture, “Auryn” which I set up in 2004 in Los Angeles is a result of my desire to push the bar in terms of visuals and visual styling in story telling. We also have a division in Pune in India and I am visiting here to take things ahead.
With your vast experience across disciplines and continents, what do you have to say about the Indian Animation & VFX scenario?
The scenario is wonderful and exciting. To me, India is not about cost arbitrage, it is about the talent. There is an enormous amount of talent that is waiting to be discovered in India, they are unpolished gems and we just need to introduce and expose them to animation story telling culture and help them identify and hone their inherent skills. We have always had a rich treasure trove of artistic style and narrative and I believe that these will be increasingly applied and effectively used in creating new age story telling forms with the most advanced technology to implement them.
You see India emerging as a source for Original Content in Animation, Globally?
Original content is a bit tricky in terms of culture specifics and sensibilities which vary across regions globally. The more universal the stories are, the better their chances. There are different preferences across the globe in terms of the editing, pace and narrative which is something that has to be looked into. In terms of production, India is already extremely competent and well placed. But I believe that the current progress is just the tip of the iceberg and a lot lot more is yet to come.
Besides the global opportunity, I I think there is a huge potential within the domestic market for Animation & Gaming in India as well.
Please tell us more about your company Auryn?
An animation story teller has four elements to manipulate, Story, Sound, Filmic Time, and Visual. While there is unlimited freedom in terms of exploration and experimentation in the first three, when it comes to visuals in animation, most of the time everything eventually ends up being the flat 2d look, or the plasticy, shiny worlds of 3D. A lot of the animated features that we see nowadays, end up looking the same.
We want to push the visual possibilities in animation to the next level and that�s why Auryn was formed. I started the company in 2004 and we have funding from Silicon Valley. We have assembled a great team including the best minds in technology from Princeton and MIT as well as art directors from France and around the world.
If you look at the history of any art form, you will observe that initially every art form follows and pursues realism. The next stage is when the art form evolves and begins to come into its own, something like impressionism.
Computer Graphics technology has been pursuing photo realism successfully for the past two decades and a lot has been achieved in that domain. With Auryn, we seek to bring Impressionism to the art form of computer graphics story telling.
What projects are being created at Auryn?
We are working on a series called painted tales and have created a couple of episodes �In Winter Still� which is done in Monet style and Almond Blossoms, which was done in the Van Gogh style. The next episodes include Tiga & A Little dancer, Leonardo and the Flying Boy.
Our DVDs are being sold around the world at museums and art stores.
Some exquisite IPs we are creating include The Girl Who Cried Flowers (in the Look Development Phase) and a new version of The Little Mermaid.
The Girl Who Cried Flowers is being written by Jane Yolen who is considered to be the Hans Christian Andersen of the US. The art direction for the show is by Pune based artist Milind Mullick. We are also working on Lisbeth Zewger�s version of The Little Mermaid. Lisbeth is amongst the most renowned illustrators and water colorist�s worldwide.
We are working with Mumbai based Maya Eentertainment Limited for both these films.
We have some other projects in development for the Indian market as well including short and long form.
You were earlier mentioning about the milestones in your career could you please elaborate a little on it? This would serve as inspiration for many of our young readers
I started out at NID where I got a good foundation. I made a couple of short films including Oil from Within the Sea was created for an energy exhibition for government of India. Video Space which was my diploma project won the Gold Medal at the institute and my experience on making the film led to my designing a motion graphics course which I taught as a guest faculty at NID itself.
While teaching motion graphics, I was simultaneously working as a film executive in Mudra at Ahemadabad.
My next stint was at a Delhi based studio New Video which had a system called Aurora 75. I remember going to Ogilvy, Lintas and other agencies and explaining to them about the creative limits they could expand by using Computer Graphics and how it was feasible to do it in India. Amongst the first commercials we did using computer graphics was for the Reliance World Cup in �87.
We had a steady stream of clientele and business was good, but I was beginning to get restless, I wanted to do more. I was in talks with the Design Council Singapore and other Government establishments there and they were serious about investing into Computer Graphics. That seriousness of intent on part of the Singapore Government made me shift up base in Singapore where we did a lot of new and exciting work in Computer Graphics.
However in a year and a half I realized that I wanted to do even more. At that time, Australia was beginning to do some exciting work and there was an ecosystem beginning to evolve. I went to Sydney and worked at Picture Star studios where we did some path breaking computer graphics work for the Channel IDs of Kerry Packer�s Channel 9.
Wherever I went, I was fortunate that I got to work on projects which were fresh and had a lot of new Graphics techniques being used for the first time. I had the pleasure of being an explorer of this dynamic art form.
From Sydney I went back to Singapore and it was there that a few colleagues from the US came and told me I should be in LA.
I had created a new short film which was selected for SIGGRAPH and when out there, I was given offers by more than five studios which wanted me to join them including R&H, Metrolight, ILM and Digital Domain.
Because I was a big fan of James Cameron, and because the company philosophy matched my approach to the art, I joined DD. This was 1994, Jurrasic Park and Appolo13 had just happened and CG was beginning to get strong.
I was part of a specialist problem solving team. Eventually I became a supervisor.
I worked on projects like Dante�s Peak, a couple of music videos for Rolling Stones, TVCs. And then came Titanic. I was a supervisor and my responsibility then was digital people. Back then nobody had used mo cap for film in a big way and we were amongst the first to do so. We had enjoyed working with Cameron on the film but we never realized then that the film would be as huge as it is.
I was problem solving on things like How do you use mocap and apply to the model and populate the ships? This was a very data expensive process and we designed a whole system to manage it. We also did roto capture.
Titanic gave a lot of challenges, but it also fuelled my desire to do more.
Next stop for me was Disney. There I was in charge of digital effects for all the features and I used to work with all the effects supervisors in the three studios and would also try and build a bridge between the traditional guys and the cg guys.
Soon Disney was thinking of their first 3D animated feature which was to be done within Disney Feature Animation, I was the Supervisor for the film. The whole pipelines had to be designed, we were into it for 2 and a half years while Disney was reworking on the story. I had some time during this and I created a film that was inspired by India, Roy Disney and Tom Schumaker liked it a lot. They said let�s not waste It on a short film, let�s make it really big.
At the same time, Jeffrey approached me, Shrek was done at their Palo Alto facility and he wanted to set up a state of art animation studio at Glendale. He was creating a core team of four people who would help him set up. We designed the whole pipeline for their first CG film which was Shark�s Tale. When I say pipeline, I don�t just mean technology pipeline, I also mean the creative pipeline. It essentially means optimizing creative and technology resources for best output within deadlines.
After that Disney called me back and wanted me to expand on my earlier concept. We worked on the development of a feature film called Fraidy Cat. This was the first time that they asked a computer guy to join the development department.
At the same time I had created a short film called Still Eye Rise. . I wanted to explore new territory in terms of visuals. That short film was a validation of a concept I had in mind and it won a lot of Awards.
I was getting a lot of emails from people telling me that they liked it very much. There is a reason why a Microsoft and a Google were started in a garage. It gave me a validation that the baton had passed to me and I should run as fast as I could and that�s how Auryn was born. It�s about pursuing one�s own convictions
Who are the key management?
We have lot�s of great talent including CEO Briggs Ferguson, ex CEO of Citisearch. He has a very interesting background having being involved with Launch which became Yahoo Launch and EMI. Then there is Amit Agarwal who manages our technology. He used be the Executive Director of Software at Sony Imageworks.
We also have Robert Kalnins, a nuclear scientist from Princeton, and he was been working on this with us for some time..
In India we are building the team and the operations are being run by Samir Bose, who was earlier heading business development at Landmarvel. We are looking to collect the best creative and technology team and want to follow the same philosophy in India and are very keen to discover talent.
We want to create a stunning team. And we are not interested in the kind of people who want to jump jobs just for a little more money. We want to work with people who want to bring about a change and are leaders and self driven.