Much awaited FICCI (Best Animated Frames) BAF 2014 Winners were unveiled at a glittering awards ceremony held on 12th March at Renaissance, Powai in Mumbai.
This year’s BAF edition received over 300 entries from around the globe that included India, USA, UK, France, Australia, China, Pakistan, Ukraine, Germany, and many more.
Indian Animation, VFX and Gaming Studios that bagged awards in several categories are Green Gold Animation, Animagic Special Effects, Toonz Animation India, Spell Bound Productions, Studio Eeksaurus Productions, Digitalclay Studios, Climb Media, Charuvi Design Labs, Agaram Infotech, Paper boat Animations, Ubisoft Entertainment Pune, Where’s the Fun Animation Studio, 99 Games, 7 Seas Entertainment, Future works, redchillies.vfx, RDP Television, Prime Focus and ITG- MORPH (India Today Group – MORPH Information Technologies ).
CFSI, Toon Club and DSK Supinfocom also won awards.
AnimationXpress.com got an opportunity converse with some winners, asked their thoughts on the win; factors that they feel have made it to the win and upcoming projects.
Green Gold Animation’ much loved character Chhota Bheem bagged the Character of the year award and sharing thoughts on this win with AnimationXpress.com, Rajiv Chilaka, Founder of Green Gold Animation, says,
“We are extremely honored to have won this award and it is indeed a very prestigious moment for us. We must admit that we are pleasantly surprised by this very special gesture from FICCI-FRAMES and would like to thank its organizers and the Jury at FICCI-BAF for recognizing us in this special way.
I always say that success has many fathers, and right from the Team at POGO to the team of writers, Music & Voice teams, my family & friends, and our entire Team at Green Gold have heavily contributed in multiple ways to the success of Chhota Bheem. I also think that Chhota Bheem was introduced at the right time, when Indian Kids space badly needed a super hero.
There are two big things that are happening for us this year (2014) besides Chhota Bheem. We are working on a TV series called Arjun with Disney which would be launched this summer. We also are working on a Theatrical film called Mighty Raju Rio calling, which would be released in Cinemas in India and across the globe in May 2014.”
redchillies.vfx bagged awards for VFX in a Motion Picture and VFX Shot of the Year for Krrish 3.
Keitan Yadav, COO & Haresh Hingorani, CCO of redchillies.vfx share,
“Winning an award always gives you a high, as it shows the appreciation and acceptance of our teams work from the industry and the audience. Though Krrish 3 has already 
won many 
awards this year, each one is very special for us different ways. We are proud and elated as our work is recognized from different quarters of the globe.
You can’t pick one for a success of a movie. There are many factors to be noted. In this movie I have to say every department have Put in their best and the result are there for everyone to see. As for as VFX is concerned this movie had though challenges thrown at us technically and creatively.
As you would have noticed that this movie had displayed effects that have never been seen in Indian movies earlier and the quality levels have been raised many folds. These were made only possible due to the dedicated and professional team in redchillies.vfx under our supervision. We had earlier raised the bar for Indian vfx industry in Ra.one and yet again in Krrish 3.
Our consistency in delivering quality vfx in the past have now opened the gates for international projects. We are currently working couple of big projects but due to the contractual obligations we cannot discuss on this forum. However we have started work on our home production “Happy New Year” which is due for release during Diwali.”
Animagic Special Effects & Toonz Animation India picked up the award for Animated Promo of Swami Ayyappan in Animated Promos- International Category.
Chetan Sharma, Founder of Animagic India, says, “Any win feels ecstatic as it is a validation of efforts put into the project. So this is no different! We love the response that the Swami Ayyappan trailer has been getting, first wining at the ANIFEST TVCA & now here!
We are excited by the enthusiasm & goodwill it is generating! We have received so much love that we can only be thankful for the grace. A big shout out to our co-director Mahesh Vettiyar from TOONZ whose heart & vision is also behind this.
Cheers to the team at TOONZ & all the studios and artists that contributed to this success…And of course, Animagic with Gayatri and our team which always does the seemingly impossible.
I think the quality of the project is the prime contributor. The visuals and the song from the film are touching the hearts of the audience from the response we have got so far, even though a lot of us can’t understand Malayalam, and so it’s fascinating.
Interesting new projects and stories very close to our heart that we are bringing to life right now! Meanwhile we continue to collaborate with the industry on many other levels! We are very glad that Pakdam Pakdai – the series on NICK from Toonz that we collaborate on the preproduction- won an award too!”
Toonz Animation India’s Pakdam Pakdai – Safari Don won the Animated TV Episode in the Indian Category.
P.Jayakumar, Founder of Toonz, shares his thoughts on this win by saying, “W
e are extremely happy about this win. As you know, this is a co-production between Nickelodeon India and Toonz Animation India. We are equally proud of the fact that the property is now becoming popular internationally as well.”
Big Thanks to Nick guys. I would attribute this as a victory of collaboration between Toonz and Nick. Stories, Animation, Music, direction, it was a winning combo. You may have also seen Swami Ayyappan winning the best promo for Indian feature side. The film is ready and we are releasing this shortly.
Three Kid Krish movies will be out in a short span of three to four months. We are working on three other Indian TV series and will be announced in few days.”
Cross Platform Game [Indian] award went to Dhoom 3: The Game, which was created by 99 Games and here is Rohith Bhat, Founder and CEO of the studio, sharing his comments,
“We a
re very excited and honored on winning the award. Over the years, 99Games has been committed to delivering games that are of global quality and enjoyed by gamers the world over.
We have received fantastic response from our end users the world over who have downloaded and played the game and this award by FICCI FRAMES which is the leading media and entertainment event in India only validates the fact further that if you have a good quality product, it will be universally acclaimed and appreciated both by industry experts as well as end users.
We believe it is a combined team effort of all the stake holders involved; starting right from the faith and the fantastic support that our licensors, Yashraj Films, have shown in us by collaborating on this project along with the efforts put by the development team in building a global quality game which did justice to the high standards of quality set by the Dhoom franchise.
Our efforts have been ably supported by the complete backing and support of all our platform and technology partners and finally, not to forget our end users who made this game a massive success by downloading it more than 10 Million times and rating it 4/5 across platforms.”
Spellbound Production’s Animated Promo Signature Tune bagged award in the 
Animated Promos [Indian] Category.
We hear thoughts of Vaibhav Chavan, Director of Spellbound,“Being one of the winners at 2014 FICCI BAF is a very prestigious and proud moment for me and my entire Spell Bound team. According to me, the main factor, which has contributed to this win award, is the original concept. This concept itself inspired us a lot. (Anything related to Charlie Chaplin… Woooohhhooo) so, my whole team was excited about the work and I think the emotion got transfer in our final product and enhanced our skills. Not to forget, music was inseparable part of our promo and those guys also done a very good job.
We are working on couple of projects like an adventure travel series for kids and also on a very rare and unknown subject from Indian Mythology.”
Blob Brothers by 7Seas Entertainment won the Social Game-Online/Mobile i in the [International] Category
Speaking to us, Maruti Shanker, Founder of the studio, says, “We are very delighted to receive the prestigious award. The prestigious FICCI-BAF international award for 7Seas showed the company’s technological capabilities to the world besides increasing our responsibilities in creating more such quality online and mobile games for the international game lovers.”We are very much thankful to the FICCI Jury.
Blob Brothers is a unique arcade concept game. The Game play is very interesting, which also includes bit puzzle and arcade combination. Especially good graphics and interesting game play have contributed to this win.
We are working mobile games focusing on sports and racing genre. Presently they are in the testing phase. Hope we will be releasing during Sept this year.”
Where’s the Fun Animation Studio wins award for game Balle Balle Ride in Mobile and Tablet Game [Touch Screen] in Indian Category.
“We are humbled and would like to thank the FICCI jury members; this comes as a huge encouragement to Indie game developers like us. We had put in a lot of hard work to make the game play fun and entertaining.
We guess the Indian elements in the game worked to our advantage.” says, Suhas. N, Founder of the Studio.”
VFX Commercial Indian Category Award went to ‘Royale Touche’ by Future works
“It’s a proud and emotional moment for the entire Future works team to win such a prestigious award. We would like to take the opportunity to congratulate each and every individual for putting up a great show for the spots and thank you FICCI FRAMES BAF to recognize the efforts and hard work which went behind the commercials.
We are also great full to Vipin Dhyani Director and Owner of Thought Shop advertising and his team for entrusting us to execute the Royale Laminate Commercials. It was great fun envisioning these spots with the director, planning and then executing the same.
It was quite a challenging commercial to execute, because we had to create the four different locations entirely in CGI with dynamic object animations and match move the live action characters to be composed over it.
As we received the script our team quickly started grabbing various references and making the boards and Animatics to gauge the camera movements and solve various issues that might arise at the live action green screen shoot. We had to take care of all Meta data like camera details, lighting information’s and record them to help us in the post production. We are currently working on a very ambitious project for WELSPUN towels which is again a combination of live action and CGI. We can share more details once we deliver the spot. Along with this we have few more interesting commercials in the pipeline. We are also in process of executing various feature films like Holiday, Ragini MMS 2, Youngistan and others and all are excited about the same.” Shares, Abhishek De, Creative Director at Future works
Ubisoft Entertainment Pune’ Game PRINCE OF PERSIA- THE SHADOW THE FLAME won the Mobile and Tablet Game [Touch Screen] [International] Category:
Here’s Sashi Menon, Producer at Ubisoft Entertainment Pune sharing his comments with us:
It feels great to be recognized among your peers in 
India. The fact that we also received the People’s Choice Award from the NASSCOM gaming forum makes it doubly enjoyable.
We’ve always been passionate believers about mobile gaming and have strived to create a memorable experience for the player. Our learnings from the games made previously and the overall enthusiasm shown by the team definitely were key factors for the success.
Providing users a fun-filled user experience with memorable moments will surely continue to be the guiding pillars for us.
While on the console front we will continue to work on the latest technology and big IP’s in collaboration with other Ubisoft studios; on the mobile our focus would be on the F2P gameplay mechanisms. You could surely expect some big name games coming out this year!
Charuvi Design Labs Shri Hanuman Chalisa won Animated Short Film- Professional [Indian Category]
Charuvi Agrawal, Founder of CDL and Director of the short, says, “We’re thrilled that this movie has touched the hearts and souls of people around the world. It’s a real motivation when the efforts and creative vision are being both recognized.The movie intends to be finally screened for public in the form of unique multisensorial show all over India. All the updates shall be released on the fan page and the official website.”
