Each original idea in animation can fetch you a grant of Rs 50 lakh in Karnataka. Moving away from being a service sector, the IT city will now aspire to be a content creator for a global audience, declared IT-BT minister Priyank Kharge, who on Sunday announced a Rs 2.5 crore grant for IPs in the animation sector in Karnataka.
Addressing the valedictory of the three-day GAFX conference, the largest animation, games and visual effects conference in India that saw 3,500 participants including students, amateurs and leading professionals from Walt Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, Nvidia, Polygon and Ubisoft, Kharge said, "The state also plans for a Centre of Excellence in Animation in Bengaluru to build internal skill capacity, provide pre and post production support and have Incubation Centers."
Sharing their experiences of the making of visual effects blockbusters like Baahubali, Fast & Furious 8, Jungle Book, Pulimurugun, Shivaay and Doctor Strange, along with animation feature films like Moana, Finding Dory, The Good Dinosaur, and VR 360 films like Dear Angelica, panelists stressed in the need to innovate to overcome the constraints of funding and technology, considering the shoestring budget the VFX industry works on.
Markus Ristich, head of training, MPC Vancouver, spoke of the challenges of building a new narrative to a popular story like The Jungle Book and said, "When we first got the notice that we were going to be working on Jungle Book, we had to go through creating an actual, hyper-realistic jungle. We had a team visit to the Indian jungles and came back with the indigenous species to see if we could recreate trees and plants. The production took nearly two years, with teams working in tandem across different time zones in London, Vancouver and Bengaluru. "
Murali Monahar, VFX supervisor & chief technical director, Firefly Creative Studio, Hyderabad said, "the Malayalam blockbuster Pulimurgan, is a fine example as to how to innovate when you have a resource crunch, nothing like a Hollywood studio or technology. The visual effects is in five action sequences which we put together with live shots of the tiger and a tiger created with computer graphics."
"Pulimurugan so far has grossed over Rs152 crore worldwide and became the first film to cross the Rs 150 crore mark in the Malayalam film industry," adds Murali.
To tap into the talent pool in the city, which has the right mix of artists and techies, the companies are setting up hiring kiosks to showcase their projects, and to woo new talent.
"The conference has been a networking platform for aspiring youth who want to make a career in animation, gaming or visual effects. The interface with leading professionals from across the globe and leading studios will sure be a game-changer for Bengaluru, which will is in transit—from a IT hub to an emerging technologies hub, " added Kharge.