India Today Group's animated political satire series So Sorry bags FICCI BAF Innovation in Animation Award 2014

 India Today Group's cutting edge animated political satire series So Sorry has bagged yet another recognition by sweeping the FICCI BAF 2014 award in the open category.

peaking on the occasion, Ashish Bagga, Group CEO, India Today Group, said, "The series has effectively been illustrating the lighter side of politics in the action-packed election season. Humour and wit that reflects on the current political drama in the nation is an awesome reflection on the public sentiment.

The impact of animation is in delivering in a lighter vein, the most serious of issues, while topicality keeps the spirit of So Sorry alive.

The inventiveness of So Sorry lies in the fact that it needs no words. It is even free of age or any bias. The capsules are live across TV, Internet and mobile, going viral within days of their launch.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-today-group-so-sorry-wins-ficci-frames-award/1/349254.html

Indian Animation & VFX Industry Gathers Force

 

The Indian media and entertainment (M&E) market has matured immensely over the last decade. The current trend of increased consumption in Tier II and Tier III cities is creating even more opportunities for the industry. In tune with the rising media access and abundant availability of digital devices, the industry is shifting its marketing and delivery platforms to cater to focused segments.

India's M&E industry is expected to reach INR 1,676 billion by 2017, growing from INR 821 billion in 2012. This digitization process may take longer than anticipated, but once in place, it will change the face of Indian media. All the stake-holders along its value chain will benefit from it.

The animation and visual effects (VFX) segment within the M&E industry is looking quite positive. VFX has shown tremendous growth from doing mainly pre- and post-production jobs procured from overseas to serving films, television and commercials with world-class content. In the coming years, India animation studios will develop content to cater to global consumers via digital platforms such as Apple iTunes, Android, Netflix and Windows. The animation and VFX market is driven by growth in the children's television genre and visual effects in movies. A large part of the revenue is contributed by these two segments. A significant rise in penetration of personal computers and mobile phones has also helped in accelerating the industry. Animation production houses in India are not only involved in outsourced post-production work, but also conversion of 2D to 3D. This segment is showing great potential and with support from the government, it is expected to flourish.

Student in Limelight- Shiven Chullet

It gives us a sense of immense pride to announce that one of our students, Shivendra Chulet of MAAC - JAIPUR has been selected as a Sr. Faculty -Multimedia and Animation with National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology - a government job. He is pursuing  BA-VFX course from MAAC Jaipur. Before joining, Shiven is getting trained on the advance skills at IIT-Bombay.

MAAC Jaipur has always focused on quality education and apart from that we pit on every effort to place our students .There are many students who have been placed in esteemed organization.

The MAAC Placements Cell conducts personal interviews with eligible students to understand their strengths & weaknesses and to provide the right career guidance. Industry experts are invited to give lectures & to conduct workshops to help students create impactful show-reels of their work.

Apart from this, all through the year, MAAC conducts a variety of events to provide opportunities for the students to interact with the industry.

MAAC Jaipur finds it to be privileges in letting everybody know that there was a placement activity in the campus on the 5^th of Feb wherein a student was placed successfully.

Apart from campus  placement, most of its students have landed up by starting his/her own venture in the field of Animation Industry.

Placement and training session by Mala Haldar

 Placement & Career development session was held in MAAC Jaipur which was addressed by Ms. Mala Haldar (students placement coordinator at Aptech).
The session was attended by 50+ students who were Animation enthusiasts wanting to get insight about the developmenet and placement trends of the Inudtsry.
Mala spoke at length about how a student has to prepare a porfolio in the right way and also the does and the dont's while facing an Interview.

 

 Further in her session she listed out various companies that have visited MAAC and also shared the future placements that shall be available to the students seeking their placements in the next few months to come.

The session was highly appreciated and well attended.

Indian team creates special effects for Gravity

Alfonso Cuaron's Sandra Bullock-George Clooney starrer space drama Gravity, which has recieved 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, was partly shot in 3D, but chunks of it was converted to the format from 2D by Prime Focus India. 
To make the space spectacle look as astoundingas it does, about 400 technicians from the Indian branch of Prime Focus, a company that specialises in rendering visual effects, animation and 3D-conversion, worked in tandem with teams from London and Los Angeles. 
Before it came on board, Cuaron asked the team here to do test-runs, and impressed by the results, Prime Focus was aboard the space mission. It helped that the VFX firm enjoyed tremendous goodwill in LA circles, having worked on the visuals of Avatar and on the 3D conversion of Clash of the Titans in a record-time of eight weeks. 
Says Merzin Tavaria, Chief Creative Director, "Gravity was a major challenge as its visual treatment is unlike any other film you've seen. Although Maya 3D is generally used, we developed a software called View-D, which not only enhanced the conversion process, but also accelerated it." 

Animation films steal Mumbai International Film Festival show this year

It’s the world’s largest non-feature documentary film festival and yet the predominant genre seems to be animation. Apart from 18 animation short films, 112 animation films from countries like France, Bulgaria, Estonia and Canada will be showcased  at  the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF 2014). Over 400 films from 35 countries will be showed at fest.

Internationally acclaimed animator-film-maker Shilpa Ranade, whose feature length Goopi Gawaiyaa Bagha Bajaiyaa (an adaptation of Satyajit Ray’s 1969, children’s film) got a standing ovation from legend Costa Gavras, among others at the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) festival last year, is a member of the jury at MIFF 2014. She was not so happy with the number of films that MIFF was showcasing. “There is so much happening on the animation landscape. It’d would have been great to find a lot more on what’s the largest international festival of its kind.”

According to her, she found great work coming from students and first time film-makers despite difficulty in raising funds.“But it’s not an easy genre. Which is why you end up seeing many works looking at themes like public service messages or straightaway ads,” she said.

Rajinikanth’s Kochadaiiyaan to release worldwide on April 11

Tamil ‘Superstar’ Rajnikanth’s multi-lingual film ‘Kochadaiiyaan’ will release worldwide on April 11, the film’s producers announced today.

Shot using Photorealistic Peformance Capture technology, earlier used in Hollywood superhit “Avataar”, the film is an “epic dramatisation” of good versus evil, producer Eros International Media Ltd said in a statement.The film will be the superstar’s first venture after his recovery from a reported kidney ailment and is directed by his daughter Soundarya Rajnikanth Ashwin.

The star cast includes Deepika Padukone, Shobana, R Sharath Kumar, Aadhi and many others. A R Rahman has scored the music.

“For the first time, a full length feature has been made using Peformance Capture technology in India and I truly hope this creates a whole alternate film avenue apart from live action films in our country,” Soundarya said.

The film will release in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Bengali and Punjabi in India and overseas in more than 6000 screens, Sunil Lulla, MD, Eros International Media Ltd said.

“We are releasing an English version internationally as well,” Lulla added.