Indo german studio THESIGN Digital Pictures Entertainment recently bagged an assignment for doing certain parts of VFX shots for The Triangle, a mini series (8hrs) for Sci Fi channel (US). The mini series revolves around The Bermuda Triangle and is scheduled to go on air by Mid December 2005.
Formed by Gregor Strasz (Art Director CEO, Germany) amd Shantanu Jahagirdar (Art Director CEO, India) and Marcus Zenkel (Business Director, CEO Germany) THESIGN has facilities in Mumbai and Bremen (Germany).
Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, Art Director and THESIGN India CEO Shantanu Jahagirdar said that, “We are a relatively new (formed in Nov 04) and smaller sized studio (15 people), but our strength lies in our commitment towards quality and detail. While most of the international work that comes to India is due to a low cost advantage, we at THESIGN want to plank on quality. As a CG studio, our strength lies more in modeling and compositing”
Elaborating on the Sci Fi assignment, Shaan elaborated, “Our main task is to deliver high-end photo realistic CG models which shall be composited later with the live action plates. Though I am the in house supervisor, being an artist myself, I work hands on with the other artists. Greg our lead supervisor has put in a lot of effort to collect textures and proper references to make the CG models at high detail. Also when it comes to simulation we have to take care of the low poly version of the models too”
“The Main challenge about our current project is the amount of details with high-resolution meshes and a challenge to help simulate them in layers with seamless lighting and texture so that we can solve the problem at 2k plate renderings” he added.
Besides the SCI FI assignment, the studio is currently doing simulation work for German clients and its past portfolio includes CG and VFX for a few german science fiction movies and Hollywood commercials and TV shows. The studio has also dabbled in some hi end architectural simulation for the Indian market.
Commenting upon the state of the Indian CG scenario Shantanu quipped “VFX and CG can improve much more in India, that depends on 2 factors. Firstly artists need to be treated better and paid more and secondly the artists on their part have to take the initiative of educating themselves beyond what they learn at institutes. We can’t keep on complaining about the quality of the training, it is upon the artist to educate himself and improve”