The influence of BOT VFX in the VFX industry was clearly seen as several BOT team members were invited to participate on various industry panels where they shared their expertise and experience. Here are three of the recent ones.
Sreyans Bardia @ Animation Xpress
January 22, 2021 was a day of erudition for BOT’s Co-Founder & Director Sreyans Bardia as he took part in the Animation Xpress 2021 Summit “VFX and More”. Sreyans was among the panelists discussing “The VFX Service Engine: The Mainstay”.
“The VFX industry in India has long since proven itself as affordable and reliable,” Bardia reported. “The challenge before us now is to meet the momentum of global growth in demand for VFX services. It’s an incredible opportunity for us to expand the RPM artist base while we push beyond the skill sets we’ve depended on so far.”
As training institutes shift curriculum towards emerging platforms, and leading global studios are setting up their own bases in India, Sreyans observes: “It’s time to go beyond our comfort zones to develop our artists with specialized skills like compositing and virtual production. We’ve got to be purposeful about enlarging and strengthening our pool of talent.” He also shared that their clients are now turning to BOT VFX for much more complex work than in the past, which is a huge impetus for the company to nurture highly skilled artists.
Hear the whole story from Sreyans here.
Hitesh Shah @ VES Georgia
In Atlanta, Head BOT Hitesh Shah shared his thoughts in a discussion entitled “The Rise of Visual EFX in Georgia” as part of an insightful panel of professionals during the March 2, 2021 meeting of the Georgia section of the Visual Effects Society. The panel, moderated by Sir Michael Hofstein, discussed the expansion of VFX activities in their state.
“Georgia is very attractive to our industry for a lot of reasons: low cost of living, variety of shooting locales, strong labor pool, and higher ed institutions, but the main reason for our industry to grow here centers around the tax incentives,” Shah observed. “So far, the state of Georgia has done a great job of staying consistent with the tax incentives for the production community. My advice to state officials: Stay steady, or do better – keep the momentum going, don’t wobble.”
View the GA VES panel with Hitesh here.
Mathew Augustine @ Animation Xpress
The IT wing of BOT stepped onto the virtual stage as Mathew Sunil Augustine, Head of IT and Security, participated as a panelist in the Animation Xpress webinar “VFX, Post Production and the Machine” on March 19, 2021.
In the panel discussion “Scope of Technology in Post-Production” moderated by AnimationXpress.com editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari, Mathew described the challenges of setting up for VFX from home during lockdown: “The work-from-home setups were a challenge. We had to be very picky about hardware and software, to stay on budget, and we had to keep the level of content security to the high standards of the industry.” He elaborated, “Our WFH solutions use zero clients, which are a lot easier to manage remotely than workstations. With that approach and a lot of teamwork, we’ve been staying busy with 90% of our artists working from home.”
