VEGAS Fest 2024, a two-day festival celebrating animation, visual effects, and gaming concluded successfully at Kalaivinar Arangam in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Organised by VEGAS (The Visual Effects-Game-Animation Society), the event also gathered young minds and industry stalwarts from across the country, providing invaluable insights into these creative fields and strengthening AVGC-XR sector’s rise in India.
Overwhelmed with the response to their efforts, VEGAS president Bejoy Arputharaj shared, “I am thrilled by the overwhelming success of VEGASFEST 2024. With over 6400 footfall, the event brought together the best minds in the AVGC-XR industry, fostering collaboration, innovation, and opportunities for young talent and professionals. This is just the beginning of our journey toward global leadership, we look forward to make the community much stronger.”
The festival agenda included masterclasses, inspiring success stories, and transformative discussions. The day commenced with a keynote address on Intelligent Data Infrastructure for the Media & Entertainment by Netapp solutions engineering manager Ramneek Sethi. He explained how his company provides integrated data services to various industries including game development. They also help in managing, storing and accessing content for diverse media workflows.
The event progressed further with the session Exploring the Future of VFX by Pixstone Images CG head Persie Jalgaonwala. He presented case studies on how to execute any project from scratch. According to him, it is very important to understand the client’s needs while executing any project, alongside offering one’s own expertise. Highbrow Interactive co-founder and COO Prashanth Krishnan interacted with the young crowd and explained the nitty-gritties of building a successful game in his session, Gaming Demystified: Everything you need to know to launch Successful Games,.
National award-winning VFX veteran Srinivas Mohan conducted a session on RRR: The Evolution from Concept to Cinematic Masterpiece. His insightful talk kept the audience glued to the seats who tried to grasp as much information they could. Mohan stressed on the fact that with the advent of artificial intelligence, the lines between AVGC-XR will be blurred making everything highly interactive. Filmmakers will have to strengthen ‘storytelling’ by offering on screen marvels that cannot be easily replicated.
A panel on Internships and Apprenticeships: Essential Pathways to Real-World Experience and Connections featured Stephen Mascarenhas, Sathish Guptha, Harish Ram, Rajan E as speakers. Moderated by Arul Moorthy, the panellists touched upon how internships and apprenticeships provide industry exposure to the young aspirants. They get to witness real life situations, understand the work pipeline, importance of teamwork and so on.
The discussion on How can government policies and initiatives support the AVGC industry in becoming a global leader included Aptech executive vice president Abir Aich, ITNT chief executive officer Vanitha Venugopal, FICCI AVGC-XR Forum chairman and Punnaryug Artvision founder Ashish Kulkarni, Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation industry partnerships vice president Ramesh Venkat in conversation with educationist, mediapreneur, actor B.S.Srinivas. The panellist pointed out the importance of including AVGC-XR curriculum at an early stage, the need of training the trainers and all industry stakeholders coming together to push for government policies and incentives.
“I have always believed that collective genius is the only way to change the world. So we all must work together,” Venugopal pointed out.
In VEGAS Fest 2024, IIT Madras Applied Mechanics department Biomedical Engineering professor Dr. M. Manivannan explored Haptics and other Experiential Technologies for AVGC Exploration of AR/VR Experiences. “AVGC is a highly creative sector. India has huge potential to lead the world in AVGC-XR,” he said. Stressing on the need to bring in more innovation, Manivannan said, “We must strive to develop our own toolset which will benefit the sector.”
The Mill creative production and services executive director R K Chand presented Beyond the Movie Screen. He touched upon the various usage of visual effects in addition to films. Chand shared how they are revolutionising outdoor advertisements with larger than life characters and so on. This was followed by The Future of Game Development: Discussing which explored the emerging trends in game development, such as cloud gaming, procedural generation, and virtual reality. The session was led by Polyphonic co-founders Pranav Patil and Vishal Kawji.
In another session Weloadin: Achieving 130 Million Game Downloads – A Success Story, the company’s co-founder & CEO Mario Royston shared his journey with the young ones, gave them amazing tips and tricks while answering most of their questions.
Behind Ayalaan: A Technical VFX Breakdown and Workflow Analysis’ provided amazing sneak peaks of the marvellous alien movie made in India. PhantomFX CG head Anish Sreedhar and creative head Mohinder Subramaniam shared how they completed this ambitious project.
Discussion on How AI is transforming the AVGC Sector had M.Manivannan, Royston, Rajesh Balaji, Alagarsamy Mayan, and Vetrivell V, emphasising innovation and collaboration.
Another important panel discussion for the day was Need for a AVGC-XR Community to learn, share and grow. The discussion saw White Apple LLP founder / MD Rajeev Rastogi, NY VFXWAALA business head Yogesh Chhag, Resonance Digital co-founder and CEO Abhyuday Grover and Industrial Light & Magic director, production/ executive producer Elayaraja Krishnan (Raja) touch upon the need of speaking together as a community, focusing on scope of VFX beyond films and so on. Raja pointed out that studios must explore other avenues to bring in business. Grover also shared how their studio interactively visualised certain real estate projects and helped their clients to look at the project without visiting the site physically.
Adding to the discussion of growth, Chhag stressed the importance of the AVGC-XR community to realise that they are not at the bottom of the entire ecosystem. Additionally he also spoke about the need of stress management as the studios often had to meet unrealistic deadlines. The session was moderated by DNEG Studio head (India) Seshaprasad A.R who concluded by saying that the community must aim to grow as a whole and bring in more innovations to find prominent space in the global market.
Another power packed session on Power and Possibilities with Game Engine, how it is used in other areas like animation, VFX, product design, visualisation and more featured 88 Pictures co-founder & COO Aby John, Famous Studios creative director (VFX head) Jayant Hadke, independent VFX supervisor Jay Mehta, ILM CG technology supervisor Bharanidharan TN in conversation with AnimationXpress founder, chairman and editor in chief Anil NM Wanvari.
Wanvari conducted the session by throwing in open house questions right from the beginning. He ensured that the young students participated in the discussion. The eminent panellists spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of various game engines.
The magic of Chhota Bheem: An insight into Chhota bheem’s success story by Green Gold Animation team K Sathiya Narayanan and T. Leo Menezes revealed the secrets behind the global success of the iconic Indian animated character. Another VFX breakdown for the day was Thangalaan: A Deep Dive into its VFX making from script to screen by Hybrid studio director/co-founder R. Senthil Kumar.
The day also witnessed a session on Digital Humans and generative AI: exploring the future of interactive entertainment. It was helmed by Mimic Production founder / CEO David Bennett. The VFX veteran who specialises in facial motion capture shared a detailed presentation.
VEGAS Fest 2024 concluded with a closing ceremony and the prize distribution segment for an entry-based competition segment on photography, showreel and short film contest.