Nestled amidst nature, creating a peaceful environment to help the creativity flow, philmCGI seems to be an artist-driven studio that boasts of a corporate-look free culture with a friendly work-space and a relaxed location in Pune!
Anand Bhanushali and Arpan Gaglani, the founder directors started the studio in 2013 with a vision to create and bring to life great stories with good animation and VFX for both Indian and international clients. Since then the team has not looked back! The studio went global in 2014 with their first international series, Bobby & Bill popularly known as Bill & Boule broadcasting in Europe. And other TV series such as YoYo and Ziggy en de Zootram for a Belgium based studio, and Yakari and Oggy and Cockroaches for French studios.
Not just this, philmCGI is also working in the VFX space and is in the process of delivering over 400+ VFX shots for Bhavesh Joshi, a Phantom Film production, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane. In the past too, the studio has delivered VFX for Bollywood feature films like Trapped and NH10 and is currently working for an untitled International feature film.
“We have always wanted to develop our own IPs keeping the global audience in mind and this process started from the inception of philmCGI,” said Gaglani.
The IPs hold a great value in the company’s brand name. In the last couple of years, the philmCGI team has also consciously been working on their own IPs. Creativity, patience and the passion to tell stories are the basic things that go behind the creation of the fascinating IPs. With the global target kept in mind, the IPs are designed to reach the audience worldwide. They sure do reach out the targeted group with the complex yet simple issues addressed in the series.
Monster App touches a sensitive issue of a kid helping himself fight fear, a basic issue faced by all the kids worldwide, and hence making it reach the target group well. Zamboora is a simple concept revolving around the curiosity of two kids and a friend in another world. The series comes under the edutainment (education + entertainment) category.
These series spark creativity in a fun and entertaining way and also help ignite the concept of story-telling, using imagination in the best manner.
“We have lots of interesting projects in the pipeline. This year a lot of our hard work and effort of the last few years will be out on big and small screens, which is very exciting and we are looking forward it,” Bhanushali stated.
Monster App, is making it big with plans to go to Annecy 2018 and Zamboora is in the making along with two others which are yet to be titled. But 2017 saw the epitome, when PhilmCGI delivered its first international CGI feature film as a co-producer, Marnie’s World and is currently working on two more International feature films along with a TV series called Badgers & Foxes which is a co-production between France and India and the broadcasting for the same has already begun on France 5 TV.
When asked about their favourite IP, Gaglani and Bhanushali couldn’t help but answer like a mother, “All our IPs are special and close to us, thus it’s hard to pick any one IP from the list,” exclaimed the duo.