MUMBAI, NOV 7: He was just another engineer who went to the US to study Computer Science a few years ago. But after a Masters degree - with a focus on animation - and valuable experience at an art school in Florida, Mumbai's Apurva Shah found his calling at the San Fransisco-based computer animation and visual effects giant, PDI. And two years ago, he was chosen to be part of select team that made a unique film possible.Antz - the story of an ant called Z - directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson, was released in the US last month, and is only the second fully computer animated feature film, after Disney's Toy Story. ``Earlier, every single frame used in an animation feature had to be drawn by hand. But Antz has been totally conceived, designed and executed on computers. We actually created sets on the machine and placed the virtual characters in them. The entire approach is closer to cinematic reality, with more room to work on the colours and texture,'' says Shah.Even afterhe joined PDI, Shah was more involved on the technical side for some time, but gradually he made a switch to the creative department and worked on the special effects for films like Batman Forever, Arrival, A Simple Wish and Broken Arrow. ``But working on a fully computer-generated feature was a totally different experience. The entire film has been shot from the ant's perspective and we have worked on trying to humanise the characters and giving them the right facial expressions,'' he says.Shah's area of specialisation for the film was water. ``It was a challenge to simulate water that looks so real on a computer - and show it flowing, splashing and interacting with moving objects,'' he says. The other breakthrough they made, was in facial animation systems. ``Earlier animators created targets within which morphed the characters' faces. But now we are actually building facial muscles, with higher level controls, which enable us to give them many more realistic movements,'' he says. And thenext giant leap was creating individual faces in a crowd - essential for a film that's set in an ant colony. ``There's one scene which has 65,000 ants, and it just wasn't enough to replicate the same face so many times over. So, we created cycles with six to seven subtle variations of approximately four frames, to set them apart,'' he says.While Shah worked on creating breathtaking visual effects for Antz, his wife Purvi, who studied design at Ahmedabad and New York's Pratt institute, designed the website for the film. ``The president of PDI specifically told me that he didn't want an animated web-site for an animation film. So, I tried to give it the look of a moving picture, just by using stills from the film and concentrating on its visual appeal,'' says Purvi.Shah is already working on PDI and DreamWorks' next animation feature, Shrek, which is set in medieval times. ``This time we are planning to use a more impressionistic palette and come up with something that you cannot shoot with a moviecamera. I think that's where animation films are heading, because audiences are getting more and more demanding,'' he says.
