The dynamism and volatility of India’s animation story is not restricted to its big four animation hubs. West, South, East and North the growth is visible everywhere.
Chandigarh based animation studio, Virtual Soft Technologies one of the first in the city to have started animation is currently working on a number of multimedia projects. They range from corporate presentations to TVCs to medical animation.
Established in 1996 and specializing in 2D and 3D animation, Virtual Soft has 11 creative artists under its wing. It evolved as an Advertising Multimedia and Design house providing ‘Integrated Marketing Communication’ for versatile mediums, ranging from print, web to CD ROMs.
The projects being worked on at the moment are: ‘Auction Broker’, a 2D animated film for a financial services firm; ‘Presym’ a 3D animated film about a heart tremor detection device’ and ‘Happy Alien’, a short 3D animated film for a game server company.
Virtual Soft began specialization in animation two years ago kickstarting with 3D modeling and animation for a Hyderabad based gaming firm which involved advanced and basic motions of characters. On the 3D front it has also worked on TVCs and architectural walkthroughs.
Cell animation films for the web were the first 2D animation projects that the studio developed. This included TV Commercials for a vegetarian breakfast Cereal for the American Market, a short ad film named “Hail Protection” for an international client Amerishade.
VirtualSoft has also worked on a few Video and VFX projects including a TVC for an International Digital Feature Film ‘3 Houses’, another TVC for an American Hospital, and a commercial for a Pizza chain ‘Westshore Pizza’ and video editing for Australian and US clients.
The most recent project that the studio completed was a multimedia presentation for the Haryana Electricity Department which was done in 3D. The presentation which showcased the progress of Haryana in the past few years was screened at Pragati Maidan in Delhi in November 2005.
Another major project undertaken by Virtual soft was for the Chandigarh Tourism Department, CITCO to launch their new convention centre which was done through a 3D walkthrough of the facility. The Governor of Punjab, Gen. J F Rodriguez launched the presentation in May, 2006.
Speaking about this project, Vineet Raj Kapoor, Creative Head, Virtual soft Technologies shared with Animation Xpress.com, “This was our biggest challenge as some animation which was even as short as a few seconds had to be created entirely from scratch like the “Krishna-Arjun Rath scene.”
The versatility of the studio is evident from the varied projects that it has done in both the 3D and 2d animation space, few of which are stick animation for British Airways, animation shorts (from story board to finish) like ‘Dancing Snowman’, ‘I am Superman’, ‘Fruit of Life’, ‘Alien Attack’, ‘Sick Fish’, ‘Knelson’ (a WW2 pilot turned quizmaster) for Whereintheworldisknelson.com, logo animations and user interfaces.
“As a studio, our interest lies in creating shorts and TVCs. We do look forward to working on Indian TVCs whenever we get the time. Virtual Soft can be called a creative house which can do ‘Story Board’ projects. We’re not looking for low end ‘wire frame’ removal projects from big banners, but prefer to do complete creative solutions” concluded Vineet.