My Decade in Visual Effects

This year end roughly marks my decade long foray in the Visual Effects industry. A journey starting off as a 3D-CGI artist doing animated titles for local TV stations and currently traveling through Industrial Light and Magic as a Visual Effects artist.

2000-2003 

I secured my first gig in 2000, for a paid job doing animated opening titles for a local television channel. It was amazing to look at my just-passed-out-of college work on the tele. I was still doing my diploma in multimedia when a director visited the institute, looking for someone to do his opening titles - I was recommended and the journey began. After doing a few freelance title jobs using 3D studio Max v2.5 and an ancient software called Infini-D, I took up a course that taught "a state-of-the-art 3D software called Maya" at a time when people hardly knew what Maya was.

My love for effects got me hooked on to Maya's dynamics, which got me my first full-time job as an effects artist in a start up company. Its at this company that I discovered the art of compositing through Combustion and slipped into full time Compositing.

2003 - 2005 

While working on my first commercial as a compositor I met up with some enthusiastic and creative guys - Osmand Lu and Vikram Puttanna with whom I made a bunch of really experimental films. I quit my full time job to pursue making digital films. Osmand and I made three films in 2003 out of which one of them - Darkness was selected as one of the top ten online films out of 3000+ entires. This was before "you tube" and "google videos". We were celebrities in the short film circles in India with our pictures in almost all newspapers and our films being screened at all the important films schools in India to showcase "digital film making".

2005 - 2007

Osmand and I decided to take a break from film making and go out and learn more about the art and science of it all. I took up an intensive visual effects course in London, which was aimed at people already in the industry and spent 6 months there understanding, un-learning and re-learning Compositing and Visual effects.

I got back to India and joined an established animation company who were interested in starting up a division that would handle post production for Commercials. I enjoyed my time there as I started getting to visit film sets and put my visual effects and short film making knowledge to use. I also got to work on an interesting panoramic stereo project, involving Indian Mythology with some scientists from the Swinburne University, called i-Cinema.

 After a year, in 2006, the company found the commercials division non-profitable and decided to close it down and at the same time I was contacted by a Screen Writer - David Elder who also ran a production company in LA, asking if I'd be interested in making a short film out of one of his scripts, after he saw 'Darkness' on an online film hosting site. I gave Osmand a call and we ended up making a film with a budget, which was exciting for us.

After the film was done, I managed to consult and freelance visual effects for a few commercial directors in India which meant that I would go on-set, supervise the shoot and after the edit is done take the entire film and sit with the director at his office and composite his film. I was a mobile one-man-effects studio. On saving enough money, I planned a budget trip to Singapore with just enough money to last me five days. My mission : find a job there.

2007 - Now.

Before traveling to Singapore I  made appointments with a few post houses in advance so that I could hit those places on landing. After visiting a few places, who said they weren't hiring at the moment, I was all set to fly back to India and get back to the unstable world of freelancing. A day before I was to leave, I decided to visit one last studio - VHQ Post and throw my cards in. To my luck, after talking to the guys there they offered my a job as a Post\Visual effects supervisor counting on my previous on-set experience and knowledge in computer graphics.

I had a great time working at VHQ Post, where I supervised and completed 75 commercials for the Asia - Pacific market. At VHQ, I gained more on-set and production experience that got me traveling up to the far corners of Egypt. In time, at VHQ I learnt more about dealing with people and selling one's visual effects to a layman. I grew more a creative artist by writing scores of treatments and ideas for different agencies and Directors. In April 2009, I won the award for the Best Visual Effects in a Commercial, in SE Asia at the Goa Adfest, with Ravi Udyawar Films. The commercial was a uniquely designed Samsung ad, which was by far the most fun job I have ever worked on from start to finish.

Way back in 1998, I was watching a "making of" documentary on 'The Lost World' and I told my cousin that some day I would work in George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. In July 2009 I got a call from Lucas Film Singapore and after a few rounds of interviews I am now working as a Visual Effects artist with Industrial Light & Magic, Singapore.

These 10 years, I consider it just a prologue in my book. A long way to go lots more to come.

The things I have learnt in the last decade - 

Dedication - Love what you are doing and give it your best there is no place for second best.

Perseverance - Be patient, things will unfurl if you have the right atittude and put in your best. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Compete with yourself - Beat your own records and set a higher bar for yourself, remember you are not the best, some one somewhere is working right now to beat you to the finish.

Learn - Learn all you can, you'd never know where and when it will come to use. Just because you are an animator it doesn't mean you should not know about the other disciplines.

You dont need contacts to get a job - You need a good, solid showcase of work thats all. You dont need to know someone to get a job, you need your own dedication.

Work work work like the devil's after your soul. Strive to be the best and nothing else.

Design & Evolution

Man has seen evolution through different ages. We've had different eras where man has witnessed discoveries and life changing inventions. What's really interesting about the last couple of decades is the amazing evolution in design.

To start off, think about the amazing things Digital Technology does to us and how it has altered our lifestyles and how dependent we have become on it. Imagine one day with out your cellphone. I can't. I can't imagine a week or two of not being connected to the world wide web. Digital technology has in turn boosted the Design factors of our lives. As time passes, design becomes simpler and sleeker.

Look at the cars from the 1970s or even the 1980s and look at the cars manufactured now. Not only has the outward sense of design changed but also the inner workings of your car. Cars can now give you choice of traction, speed and other location based options. Like the Nissan GTR, that car detects when you are on a race track and turns off the speed limiter and at the same time the cars look like what people from the 60's thought would be alien ships from the another planet.

Another interesting factor in all of this is, the evolution of human thinking. The designs and concepts that are made today could not even be dreamt of as a concept a few decades ago. If you asked a product designer to make a concept of something he\she imagined 20 years from now it would be out of the world amazing for us. But 20 years from now that design would be prehistorically outdated. Our thinking process and perception evolves by the minute not by the years. At the same time, designs become simpler and more user friendly. People are bombarded by information from all directions now that the simpler things are designed the easier it seeps in our daily eco system. For eg. I over heard a person buying a cell phone at a store the other day and on making his final decision he asked the store owner if the phone had an "iPod". iPods have become the synonym for an Mp3 player. The buyer didn't ask if the phone had a "Zune" or a "Zen", he said "iPod". Why? because iPods became the most simplest and tactile gadgets to play music and it continued to make a significant progression, just like the iPhone became THE multi touch benchmark. On the similar lines, one doesn't say "can you search for this on the internet?" "Search" has been replaced by "Google". I know a lot of people, and myself, who are guilty of it and wishes we had a "google" in our daily lives.

The reason Apple's products and Google are so popular is because of the ease of use - simple user centric interface. This is a major step in Design Evolution. Design dictates strongly if your product is going to be a runaway success or if its going to drop down the abyss of criticism. The more the eye candy, the simpler the usage. Always keep the user in mind and look back and remember what we have evolved from.