ICAT Design & Media College: December 2011

About Mr. Srinivas Mohan :
This Computer programmer from Andhra Pradesh came to Chennai to learn 3D Animation in 1991 and started his glorious career in 1996. Currently Mr. Srinivas Mohan is the Founder & CEO of the Indian Artists Computer Graphics, Chennai and was responsible for winning 3 National Awards for the Films Magic Magic (2001), Shivaji – The Boss (2007) and Endhiran the Robot (2010). He also won a Special Jury Award in FICCI-FRAMES 2011 for the film Endhiran.

About Guest Lectures at ICAT :
ICAT pioneered the concept of guest lectures in Media & Design related courses in India. From 2004 till Mr.Srinivas Mohan’s recent guest lecture, the college has hosted the lectures of more than 300 world class professionals in various fields. One of the most favorites among our students, such interactions not only provides a world of knowledge but they also motivate them to emulate the success of such accomplished achievers.

Mr. Srinivas Mohan, VFX supervisor of Endhiran explained the numerous difficulties he and his team had faced to produce the effects. Endhiran had used most of the visual effects technologies in a single movie. Unlike other Indian films it adopted a completely different pipeline to create the extraordinary effects.

He further explained about the new technologies used, namely Laser body scanning which scans a live human character and reproduces a complete digital 3d version of him/her which can be later manipulated by a 3d artist in post-production. The same technology has been used to extract accurate texture information from the target object. He also spoke about dome lighting, an interesting technology which allows you to extract lighting information for the target object, by taking over a thousand photographs from different lighting scenarios, under a single dome light.

Mr. Mohan gave thorough insight on various other new technologies which were used in production, such as, motion control rig which has the ability to record and reproduce the exact same camera motion, so that the artist can create various layers for later compositing. He also gave a brief about the history of visual effects (optical effects) and how it was done in the past where there were no computers. He emphasized on the importance of pre production and suggested that the students should form a sound base of understanding the pre production techniques because it will help them to develop their work better in the production level. The most important advice he gave the students was that they should aim to be a “creator rather than a computer operator”.

It was very useful for the students that he shared his wisdom that to make a sustainable career in Visual FX , a budding artist needs to know the concepts before he learns the tools. He further explained how this learning methodology proved useful to him for creating his own plugin during the production of Endhiran.

He concluded by explaining the use of digital storyboards, which in contrast to the conventional 2D storyboards, has live digital sets and digital characters performing in the scene, so that the artists and directors could work together more interactively before actual production.