Aranyak "Now Streaming" Promo
Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1 - Opening Sequence
Category
Animation, Unreal
Year
2022
Role
CG Supervision, Creative Direction, Pre-visualisation, Animation
Credits
Opening Animation by Plexus Motion
Concept & Direction: Yashoda Parthasarthy
Creative Producer: Vijesh Rajan
Director of Photography: Harshvir Oberai
CG Supervisor: Varun Ramanna
Color Grading: Sidharth Meer (Bridge PostWorks)
Art Direction: Thiyagarajan S
Modeling: Vijay Vikas Chaudhari, Shaswata Bhowmic, Bharathi Raja Elango, Abhijeet Ghodake, Manoj Budake, Anand Chander, Thiyagarajan S
Junior Pre-visualisation Artist: Jhanvi Ambasta
3D Generalist: Devanshu Tak
Lead Material Artist: Ishan Verma
Lighting & Texturing: Etienne Jacques
Motion Designers: Kiba Raman, Peter Chang
Technical Supervision: Parthiva Chandramohan, Ranjan Kutty
Associate Design Lead: Aneri Shah
Editor: Chandrashekhar Parab (Magic Farm Studios)
Storyboards: Thiyagarajan S Animatic: Goba Gonsalves
Simulation & FX: Ekadish Solanki, Subbu Iyer
Compositor: Varun S Ramanna
Rendering: Raman Vyas
Pipeline Management: Rajesh Menon
Budgeting & Accounts: Jayesh Samudra (SHAS & Co)
Secondary Characters Team (Pod8 Studios)
Asset Supervisor Shikhar Sharma
Production Manager Ashwini Rane
Sculptors: Kapil Gunpal, Nagesh Kumar, Akash Chakraborty, Kuldeep Rawat, Sucharita Nath, Imran Raichuri
Director's Cut Sound Design: Vijesh Rajan
Director's Cut Music: Pete Johnson (Risian)
An opening animation for the 2022 Indian Tamil-language epic historical action drama film directed by the award-winning veteran director Mani Ratnam.
The sequence introduces its primary protagonists while also setting the stage for the geopolitical rivalries both inside and outside of one of the longest-ruling dynasties in world history: the Chola Empire. This historical drama, from acclaimed director Mani Ratnam and adapted from Kalki Krishnamurthy's celebrated novel, stars Tamil cinema's biggest actors, including Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Jayam Ravi, with a score by Oscar winner A.R. Rahman.
Long-time collaborators and friends, Plexus Motion, approached me to help create a fully animated 2-minute sequence from scratch, which included designing and creating over 15 intricate characters and 6-8 unique and detailed environments in under 3 months. To make things even more challenging, the world was set in the Chola Era, which required a lot of bespoke assets to be built, due to the distinctly beautiful art style of the era.
My team and I leveraged Houdini's powerful toolset to build and pose the character assets. Ultimately, everything was sent to the Unreal Engine for final layout, lighting, and rendering. Using a real-time engine like Unreal allowed us to iterate extremely quickly, which was integral given the tight timelines and complex deliverables.
It was an honour and privilege to contribute to a project of this magnitude, and I hope to work with the team again soon!
