Karnataka artistes shine at the Oscars

Three visual effects artistes from Karnataka who were part of the team from Rhythm & Hues (R&H) which won the Academy Award for best visual effects in a motion picture have done the state proud.

Vishwanath Shirodkar from Sagara, Manasa Krishna from Chikmagalur and Wineeth Wilson from Bangalore, were part of the team from R&H which won the Academy Award for best visual effects for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.  

Under the supervision of Bill Westenhofer & Erik Jan DeBoer, R&H executed over 75 per cent of the visual effects for the movie. R&H is no stranger to the awards. In 2008, the VFX wizards of the company got an Oscar for the movie Golden Compass.

Life of Pi presented great visual effect challenges including creating digital oceans, fantastic virtual environments, and realising incredible lead characters like Richard Parker, the magnificent digital tiger, all in 3D stereo. This mammoth task was undertaken by the company’s artists based in Los Angeles, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kuala Lumpur, Vancouver and Taiwan.

Over 300 digital artists from Rhythm & Hues based in Asia were involved in all stages of production, from the initial stages of R&D along with stereo quality control, modelling, pre-lighting, texturing, to match moving, background preparation / rotoscopy, animation, cloth and fur simulation, water simulation, lighting and final compositing.

“Working on Life of Pi was a great learning experience for everyone at Rhythm & Hues in Asia, it is a proud moment to be involved in this Academy Award winning film,” Vishwanath said.  Almost half of the revolutionary visual effects work was done out of the R&H studios in Asia, representing the global nature of the film’s production. “Given right encouragement and environment, artists around the world are capable of creating Academy Award winning work,” Manasa added.