Animating Cannes fest and more

Two computer whiz-kids from a Chandigarh-based animation studio, Virtual Realms Productions, have created ripples across the globe with their film, The Eyes of Silence.  It has become the first Indian animation film ever to have won awards at five international film festivals at different venues around the globe. It became the first Indian short animation film to be screened at the recent Cannes Film Festival.

The young animators said they wanted to showcase their talent by making this film and believed that filmmaking is instinctive; even the best of films can be made with the most microscopic budgets.

The 3D animation film is a story about a terrorist who is an explosive expert and embarks on introspection over his mission on hand.  With the help of international affiliates he departs on the journey of a lifetime. The terrorist  has a humane heart and a thoughtful mind that drives home the realization  that someone who could be  killed here is not different from those whom he knows. The movie simply tries to make the point that violence spawns violence and triggers a chain reaction. Sanity prevails only when you pause and analyze the grim truth behind your actions and decide to make a change.
After attaining international acclaim for their work, this team of young animators who are computer engineers by profession, but animators by passion, now intends to make an animation film for Bollywood.

“We are planning to make India’s first photo-realistic lifelike animation film based on the legendary Mahraja Ranjit Singh,” says Avi Sidhu who directed “The Eyes of Silence”.  He said they were already talking to top Bollywood producers in this regard.

The film is a creation of two engineers Avi Sidhu and Navneet Kinger, the producer of the film, who developed a passion for computer graphics, and has so far won five awards internationally. These include the highly coveted Accolade Award of Merit in Animation at The Accolade 2009, Best Animation Award at the Rockport Film Festival 2008, Aloha Award for Excellence in filmmaking at the Honolulu International Film Festival 2009, Silver award for Best Animation at the Lake arrowhead Film Festival 2009 and Best Drama & Animation at the Firstglance Hollywood Film Festival 2009.

Having been selected for screening at over 11 film festivals across the world, they have also obtained invitations from organizers of four other film festivals to screen their film.   These include venues at the US, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Egypt.

The two self-taught animators have set up their own firm Virtual Realms Productions, one of the pioneering firms in architectural visualization in the region. They made the film with just two computers. “We dedicated on an average two hours a day to the film apart from working on our studio’s projects all day,” Avi said. He explained "The Eyes...." is different from traditional animation films.  "It explores the genre of the photo-realistic and drives home the point that animation is a medium that kids and adults could equally enjoy," Avi said.