Ratatouille wins animation Oscar

Six years in the making, Emeryille's Pixar Animations Studios was rewarded for its patience and determination Sunday night when "Ratatouille" came away with the Oscar as the best animated film of the year.Scripted and directed by Brad Bird, who won two Oscars for Pixar's "The Incredibles," the film is the tale of a rodent named Remy, with delicate taste buds, who by chance is let loose on a classy Parisian restaurant and succeeds in winning over the city's top food critic. In his acceptance speech, Bird backhandedly thanked his junior-high guidance counselor, whose questioning of his career choice as a filmmaker prepared him for the grilling down by Hollywood producers. But, according to many critics, the night should have been a much larger triumph for the film. Although it landed five Oscar nominations and was ranked by many critics as one of the year's best, it was never a serious contender for best picture. And its other nominations across three different disciplines -- best original screenplay, best score, best sound mixing and best sound editing -- suggested the kind of broad consensus that often results in bigger awards. Its five nominations rank as the most ever for a computer animated film, and rate second among all animated films, only surpassed by the six received by Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." That picture, done in the traditional Disney style in 1991, stands as the only animated film to ever be nominated for best picture. If not for the best animated feature category, it's safe to say "Ratatouille" would have been strongly considered for best picture. Lewis, the film's producer, is quick to point out that he has no sour grapes with the academy -- and that he's ecstatic about the five widespread nominations.
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Om Shanti Om VFX in Dhoom Tana

Mumbai based 'Redchillies.vfx' has won Bollywood's popular Screen Awards for Best Visual Effects for the Shah Rukh Khan starrer mega blockbuster 'Om Shanti Om'. The other movies nominated in the same category were Chak De! India & Taare Zameen Par.
Delighted on winning the award, Redchillies.vfx COO Keitan Yadav shared with AnimationXpress.com, "Definitely we are excited and happy after winning this award. We are being nominated for the award from last three years but have won it for the first time. Also it was an honour to be nominated for two films (also Chakde India) in the same category. Explaining the VFX shots, he said, "The movie had a retro song - 'Dhoom tana' which consisted of high-end VFX work and also, there were a lot of complex sequences which made the work varied and unique," he added.

Stage 1

The team had to locate the original footage of the films they had short listed. The three song sequences appeared in Amrapali (1966, Sunil Dutt and Vyjayantimala), Saccha Jhutha (1970, Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz) and Jay-Vijay (1977, Jeetendra and Jayashree T). Not always in the best condition, the original footage had to be scanned, carefully restored and cleaned up to the best possible quality on the computers.
Stage 2

Keeping in mind, the set of the films, the camera angles and the lighting, Deepika Padukone was shot in present dressed in similar costumes as the yesteryear actresses to further enhance that ‘70’s look. She pretended to dance with the actors by romancing an imaginary hero.
Stage 3

The original actresses, i.e. Vyjanthimala, Mumtaz and Jayashree T. were removed from the sequences. All this of course, was done with the help of the Red Chillies’ VFX (visual effects) team. Sequences where the camera was moving and the actors were in contact were specially chosen, so as to provide opportunity for Deepika to dance along with them as opposed to posing. Things to note were the eye contact between the actors, physical touch, lighting continuity, perspective matching, skin tones matching, color matching, etc.
Stage 4

Deepika’s footage was pasted in place of the actual actresses’ footage. The technical term for this is ‘compositing’. Thus, it seems that she has been locked in the same frame as legends, Sunil Dutt, Rajesh Khanna and Jeetendra. The song truly was a treat to watch. And now some of our wonder and amazement has been satisfied. Keitan Yadav, COO of Red Chillies VFX asserted that the idea was to give a feel of the era and is glad that they seemed to have succeeded.
He adds that “there are about 200 additional shots in the film where VFX is used like the snow-flakes in the globe, SRK and Deepika turning real and dancing in the globe, the Mother India fire sequence, Shantipriya’s death sequence and the climax sequence.”
Image Courtesy: ‘The Making of Om Shanti Om’ published by Om Books International

The Golden Cursor Animation Award

As the Indian animation revolution gathers momentum and readies to conquer the world, CNBC-TV18, India's leading business medium along with Arena Animation have instituted The Golden Cursor Excellence in Animation Awards powered by Animation Xpress.Com which is the World's No 1. source for News, Information and connectivity with Indian Animation, VFX & Gaming. These awards will present to the world, the true heroes of the Indian Animation industry. The entire industry will participate in this pioneering initiative. An eminent jury panel will then evaluate the nominations. The winners of these prestigious awards will then be felicitated in a gala ceremony later in the year.
The awards are a benchmark for excellence in animation in India and will empower the industry to its next level of growth. You are the driving force and a hero of the Indian animation revolution. It is now your time to shine and present to the world your creative genius.
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'Yahoo.co.in is the Best online gaming portal‘ - Web 18

Leading portal Yahoo.co.in has won the Web 18 - Genius of the Web Award in the category of best e-commerce online gaming portal. Yahoo won this award in competition with other nominees including Indiatimes.com, funtoosh.com, hungama.com and zapak.com.
‘Geniuses of the Web‘ Awards is a series of awards in multiple categories that recognizes outstanding industry achievements by companies that have done commendable work in the online space.
Elated on being adjudged the best e-commerce online gaming portal, Manish Dalal, Director of Yahoo India shared with AnimationXpress.com, "Yahoo has always striven to provide the best games to its customers. The online gaming space is a niche market and is growing rapidly and users are increasing manifold."
Surya Mantha, CEO of Web 18, informed, "As the Indian Internet community is growing, the online gaming space in India is nurturing at a rapid speed. Web18 and Genius of the Web Awards are committed to recognizing the new and pioneering efforts; it is our privilege to honor all these champs in the online space."
Under the Genius of the Web Awards, several other brands emerged victorious in their respective fields. Jetairways.com, Shaadi.com and Orkut.com were announced the winners of Best Airline site, Best Matrimonial portal and Best Social Networking website, respectively.
The announcement brought mixed reactions from the audience present for the award function, those who won cheered in pleasure and those who couldn‘t make it to the top, emoted the promise to come back to win the title next year!!