Roadside Romeo makes it to animation ‘Oscars’ shortlist

The Indian film industry has just bagged its first nomination at the prestigious Visual Effects Society (VES) awards — known as the Oscars of the animation and visual effects industry. India’s first full length animation 3D film—Roadside Romeo, co-produced by Yash Raj Films and Disney, has been nominated in the ‘Outstanding Animation in an Animated Motion Picture’ category alongside big Hollywood animation films such as Dreamworks’ Kungfu Panda and Disney’s Wall-E. Tata Elxsi, the Bangalore-based VFX arm of the Tata Group, has done the entire animation for the film and a large contingent from the company is heading to Los Angeles for the awards, which are scheduled just a day before the Oscar night on February 21. This is the first time that a property created in India has been nominated for VES awards for excellence in visual effects and animation. Competition for the film comes from Bolt - The Chase, Kung Fu Panda, Waltz With Bashir and Wall-E. Roadside Romeo’s 90 minutes has around 1500 shots and 37 scenes and the entire project, from visual conceptualisation to final delivery, was executed at VCL with help coming from Disney. Each frame was executed to detail in less than two years involving 170 odd artists at peak. The entire film was made up of 150000 frames. Among the challenges for the film, says Khandpur, are the fur that the characters sport, specially Laila who has shoulder length hair which requires a skill set which is cumbersome to achieve and also requires a lot of processing power .