VFX Assemblage cements its base with veteran talent Priyank Raj and Samuel Kumar -

Assemblage cements its base with veteran talent Priyank Raj and Samuel Kumar

Assemblage Entertainment, the studio which has created huge ripples in the animation industry in India in just a short span of two years, is on its way of getting bigger and better. The studio which recently delivered a major animated feature film Norm of North is now looking forward to strengthening its team and equipping its artists to raise the bar for its deliverables.

Priyank Raj has joined team Assemblage as the Vice President Operations recently on 11 July, 2016. Replacing Milind Shinde who served as the COO, Raj will manage the entire workflow in terms of operations, projects and artists. “Making sure production is in place, team structure is there, monitoring each and every project, bidding out projects in terms of manpower, setting the priorities for various projects, negotiating with clients in terms of time and deadlines and getting some new hires are all part of my profile. So, my profile is basically looking after every aspect of the company,” explains Raj.

Priyank Raj
Assemblage Entertainment, VP Operations, Priyank Raj

Priyank Raj comes with a great deal of experience of around 11 years in the media and entertainment industry especially in animation and VFX. He started his career in this industry at Crest in 2005 where he worked as line producer. He thus worked on major projects like Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, Alpha and Omega and the pilot of How to Train Your Dragon. Further on he worked with Reliance MediaWorks and Prime Focus on notable feature films like Kick, Aashiqui 2, Jai Ho and Dabangg 2.

His last workplace was Riva Animation and VFX where Raj served as the head of production.

Assemblage is looking forward for various new changes in the system with the experience and expertise of Priyank Raj. He adds, “Since the time I have joined, various new policies and process changes, initiatives, training sessions conducted for artists by artists have been implemented. So, I want to strengthen the artists by giving them a vision of what’s in store for them and keeping them excited about the ongoing projects.”

Replacing Upen Desai who served as Head of IT at Assemblage is Samuel Vinod Kumar who joined the enigmatic team from 18 July, 2016. Kumar too hails with a great deal of experience of over 26 years in the Information Technology field.

At Assemblage Entertainment, Kumar will be managing the entire IT infrastructure with all the technical processes both in terms of hardware and software. He will supervise all the IT systems and technical production softwares for the entire team.

Samuel Vinod Kumar has emerged from Prime Focus where he served for over eight years venturing into various fields. At Prime Focus, Kumar explored the advertising and production field, VFX and post production arena in terms of technology and later worked with Prime Focus Technologies. He is also responsible for various cutting edge projects like IT Infrastructure for Indian Premier League (IPL) 2009 and 2014, migration of Star TV and Zee TV’s IT Infrastructure and for rolling out various IT service portals.

Samuel Vinod Kumar
Assemblage Entertainment, Head IT, Samuel Vinod Kumar

Kumar defines his aim at Assemblage by saying, “We are a two year old studio and thus want to end the ‘survivor’ phase. Now, we want to enter the phase of competitiveness; we want ourselves to be competitive in this fast paced industry. By implementing efficient technology, automation, good quality infrastructure and speedy IT systems, I want to enhance the production capacity of Assemblage.” Kumar is currently focussing on a complete Cloud based system to make the content available for clients at any corner of the world.

With Priyank Raj and Samuel Kumar adding to the enhancement of Assemblage, Arjun Madhavan who is the son of Assemblage CEO, AK Madhavan has also grounded his foot in the strengthening and development of the studio. Arjun is currently involved in strategising and implementing various new initiatives to make Assemblage an ideal place for artists, projects and for animation as a whole.

VFX