Prime Focus' VFX adds zing to Bisleri TVC

Gone are the days of bottled mineral water. With new entrants banking on the 'Himalayan origin' factor, Bisleri has released its latest 40-seconder that positions the brand as mountain water, courtesy Prime Focus, Ambience Advertising and White Light Motion Picture. The ad escaped the normal routine of storyboard-to-post production and was treated more like a piece of art. The director's vision filled in the gaps. Reading straight out of the duo's brief to Prime Focus: "Treat water like the elixir of life. The ad must go through the stages of birth, assimilation, generation, celebration and return to source. Use graphics as a connect between traditional beliefs and today's newer value system".Only the water body by the mountain and the droplets are CG, rest of the water movements were shot and further enhanced. Prime Focus Senior Manager (Business Development), Kunaal Saigal added, "A lot of experimentation went into making this commercial as the script was open ended. There were days when we thought we have wrapped it up, but the very next day we would go back thinking no, let's add something to it."The important dance and gushing water sequences were shot at high frame rates 500 or 1000 fps. "We now have a huge library of shots of water," added Jayant, "as water in every form, droplets, bubbles, flowing was either used as the main focus or in the background."
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India’s First Expo on Animation, VFX & Gaming

Visit Expo Website for more information

CGTantra has partnered with Nine to organize CGTExpo 08 - India’s First Career Guidance and Computer Graphics Technology Expo on Animation, Visual Effects and Gaming. Conceived with CGTantra’s philosophy of “Learn Inspire Grow”, CGTExpo aims to provide an insight into a career in Animation, VFX and Gaming as well as a cross pollination among the Studio’s, technology professionals and the student fraternity. Activities planned at the Expo include a Job Fair, an Education Fair, a Technical Exhibition, Master classes, Showcases, Seminars, Student Competitions, Art Galleries, Entertainment Zone etc. Set to be the largest such event in India, it will be held over 2600 square meter of air-conditioned space at Bombay Exhibition Centre, Western Express Highway, Goregaon (E), Mumbai on 24th and 25th May, 2008.

Indian Artists` work on Digital Skin Grafting for `Sivaji`

At times VFX is about sheer technique, at times it is a lot of hard work!
Sample this: Rajnikanth starrer Sivaji-The Boss has a song sequence (Style song), where the wheatish skinned super star sports a European Complexion.Sounds like a case of color correction? or DI? It would have been so, but for a small thing, the makers of the movie wanted the star to not only have light colored skin but a soft fluffy texture as well!
Enter Chennai based studio ‘Indian Artists‘ which came up with the idea of Digital Skin Grafting.

"After the song sequence was shot with Rajnikanth, Cinematographer K.V.Anand and our team actually reshot the same song with an enchanting European belle who performed Rajnikanth‘s steps in the same lighting conditions. All the 630 shots with Rajni and the additional 630 shots with the European model were scanned in 4K resolution. Each of the 9000 scanned frames ware rotoscoped to separate the body parts (face, hands, legs etc.). The lady‘s skin was mapped onto the Rajnikanth‘s image using Eyeon "Digital Fusion" software. And finally the actor got his glowing white complexion with a soft fluffy skin texture" shared VFX Supervisor V. Srinivas M Mohan.
"There were two difficult aspects in this project. One was matching the girl‘s action with the hero‘s action and the second was matching both of their body proportions during mapping. The work involved was laborious and painstaking. Great attention was paid to detail right from the shoot until the final print. It has taken 25 dedicated CG technicians almost a year to achieve this 6½ min. feat" he added.
On being asked as to why not color correction or DI, Srinivas pointed out that, "The complexion would have changed, but the texture would have remained the same. Besides with fair complexion, there is a lot more translucency and hence very less shadows"
Why not CG? "With the full CG face, 3d tracking, matching expressions and lighting of the hero are again difficult and time consuming tasks and besides we are specialists in compositing" he elaborated.
The film ‘Sivaji-The Boss‘ starring Rajinikant is amongst the costliest film made in India. It has been Directed by S.Shanker, Music by A.R. Rehman and Produced by A.V.M Productions.