The CG output from Sagar Post just gets better with every new show. If the mesmerising miniature work and set extensions in Hatim Tai made one wonder what next, Antariksh produced by Wildfire Entertainment, with CG & FX work from Sagar Post takes the quality levels of Indian CG & FX for TV to the next level.
The sci-fi series of which a major portion is CG & Hi end FX work has been on air for around three weeks now on Star Plus and the response to it has been positive.
Except for a few props and the characters, the entire serial with its backgrounds has been done in 3D.
The creators of the show came up with its look and style after doing a lot of research including tonnes of reference pictures of outer space in extensive research on the internet, audio visual content available on the topic etc.
From the time it was concieved, the plan was that four new episodes of the show would be aired every week. Huge challenge for any CG studio to cater to such demands week after week. Keeping the volume of work and the high quality levels in mind, Sagar Post began work on the show as early as a year ago. A team of fifteen artists was involved full time on the project from day one. The team was divided into groups of four to make the workflow more systematic and increase efficiency.
Speaking to Animation Xpress.com about the look of the serial, Jyoti Sagar, CEO, Sagar Post shared, “In my opinion this is the first time that animation on such a scale has been done on the Indian Television front. Also to give an Indian feel to life in outer space was something we had to pay a lot of attention to. We’ve tried to blend in the characters with the background trying our best to make sure that they don’t look mismatched”
Antariksh is set in an era ten thousand years from now. The story revolves around a royal family on the planet Prithiv and the protagonist of the serial is Amar. The serial showcases the fight between good and evil and the victory of good over evil with Amar trying to save the planet from being destroyed by the evil mutant Rankaal.
The serial shows a lot of influence of Star Wars and the style of animation done in the 70’s. A lot of detailing has gone into designing each and every aspect of the sets right from the little motifs on the pillars of the rooms to the light streaming in through narrow shafts in the room. Antariksh while being futuristic has a very Indian feel to it. It was thought out to be so, so that the audience could relate to it. The cultural influence is seen in the way the sets have been designed with intricate ethnic art and also the costumes of the characters.
Elaborating on the challenges faced while making the serial, Jyoti Sagar shared, “A lot of emphasis was laid on compositing owing to the fact that the backgrounds and sets are completely done in 3D. We didn’t want the scene to give the impression that the characters had been pasted against the backgrounds making them look out of place. Also rendering each object took us a lot of time as attention had to be paid to the minutest details.”
What Sagar Post has tried to do with 3D is give a sense of largeness and space on TV even though it’s a small screen. One gets the feel of massive landscapes and endless space.
Jyoti Sagar concluded by saying, “It’s been a really satisfying experience working on this serial. After the kind of work that we have done, it has instilled in us a new confidence to make more shows of this quality. We plan on taking this experience and getting into a new level of 3D feature making everything in CG including the characters”
The post production house is also working on a serial called Lucky in which some of the landscapes have been done in 3D giving a sense of surrealism. Additionally, Sagar is also producing a film called 1971 which is due to release early next year in which some sequences have been recreated in animation.
